First of all an apology for my recent absence from posting. I have no good excuse but I wanted to acknowledge it and own it. Today I resume with a discussion of collective trauma, something that many of the people I meet are suffering from right now at this very difficult time in the world.

In the past the shamans never saw people just as individuals. They saw them as part of a family, a community, a tribe, a collective of some kind. The egocentric bias of therapy in the West for many years forgot about the systemic, societial environment, and focused on the individual. But recent years have seen a resurgence of interest and work in the field of collective trauma.

Of course there has always been collective trauma but it seems to have come into public consciousness in an unprecedented way in recent years. I perceive it really came into awareness with Me Too, sexual trauma. Then Black Lives Matter, racial trauma. Then Extinction Rebellion, environmental trauma. Then Covid – massive, global existential/health trauma. Then the Russia-Ukraine war, then the Israel-Gaza war (plus of course all the other conflicts we hear less about, including Myanmar, the DRC, Nigeria…). And there is escalating stress and trauma caused by the poverty, uncertainty, prejudice, fear, judgements, incarcerations etc stemming from the actions and policies of various political leaders across the globe.

Bert Hellinger was one of the first Western therapists to acknowledge the pivotal role of collective trauma with Family Constellations, which I have written about previously. https://balanceandpurpose.co.uk/2024/12/12/constellations-in-the-knowing-field/ More recently Thomas Hubl has written about and worked with Collective Trauma extensively in global online workshops. https://thomashuebl.com/And the psychedelic movement is very anxious to include the wisdom keepers of the plant medicine in the wealth being created with the monetisation/capitalisation of psychedelic therapy. Many of these indigenous wisdom keepers have suffered greatly at the hands of colonisation, but their tenacity has kept alive the traditions that Westerners are now flocking to for healing. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339602709_The_role_of_Indigenous_knowledges_in_psychedelic_science

Right now many of the clients that I see are suffering from collective trauma. Particularly young people, who say if this society is what humanity wants and has created – they don’t want to be a part of it! I love the Graham Hancock talk about Thoth’s prophecy from the Hermetic texts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvzZ56ZbWy8 and many of the ancient traditions predicted that this time would be difficult for humanity, including the Mayans and the ending of their calendar cycle in 2012, and the Hindus with the Kali Yuga predicted in the Puranas.

So depending on one’s spiritual beliefs, have we chosen to be here at this very difficult time? Maybe you believe that, maybe you don’t. Whichever, whilst we are living in these bodies, on this planet, at this time, how can we best work with the collective trauma that we encounter and are surrounded by daily?

One of my teachers is Mac MacCartney and his suggestion is simply to live while you are alive and at the end of your days, what did you do for the children’s children? (Within this he includes humans, but also the animal people, the plant people, the rock people). I also recently watched what I thought was an excellent interview with Dr James Glattfelder about Idealism and Consciousness and how the purpose of life is to accept responsibility for your consciousness, for your evolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKBuamCWuZs&t=127s

Some of the problems seem to be that people get caught up in fake news, in conspiracy theories, in materialistic lack and existential despair. But the more energy we give to these, the more we are feeding exactly that which we are afraid of rather than taking action and responsibility for ourselves. A Mahatma Gandhi taught, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”