Top 5 Tools to Release Collective Trauma

Sociological trauma is a concept that describes how trauma can affect a social group and how social events can cause trauma. Collective trauma refers to the destruction of social infrastructure and the negative mental health outcomes that can result. Some sociologists argue that trauma is a collective experience, not just a psychological one. They also argue that trauma plays a key role in the origins and outcomes of social conflicts.

As a clinical hypnotherapist, I help people process their emotions, regulate their nervous systems through regularly engaging parasympathetic drive and assist them to locate and utilize their own inner resources to create incredible change in their lives. This often results in extraordinary and lasting results.

Right now, many are reaching out to me after the results of the U.S. election for guidance. Here are my top 5 tools for releasing collective trauma.

1. Breathe, slowly and deeply. Focus. Come back to presence
2. Move your body. Go for a walk to release the cortisol and adrenaline dump.
3. Engage parasympathetic drive. Having a hypnotherapy practice is in my opinion essential. Also, aromatherapies are lovely to stimulate the vagus nerve through your senses.
4. Heal your past. Current events compound past event. Wounds from your past that made you feel like you were not the authority over yourself are reactivated when current events occur that “push that button.” If there’s no button to push, you’re not compounding.
5. Never give up your agency. Circumstances are always changing and cannot be your only sense of safety or power. You must have your own personal alignment, your personal sovereignty, your power that magnetizes the circumstances around you personally. Do not get lost in a collective ideology, whether you love it or fear it. Neither will yield the results for you personally. This is always our own work to do. Your agency is yours. Learn to self-lead. I have many, many tools for this. Decide now that this is your motivation for becoming who you truly are.

No one can take your agency, unless you give it to them. Be mindful of the runaway story the voices in your head want to tell you. That’s the hook the collective story latches onto that is old programming from your past. As it latches on, you internalize it through acceptance. Be aware of that. Use it as the gateway to investigate yourself.  Do not accept collective truths as personal truths. Do not accept collective ideology because you have evidence in the past. Stay present. You have resources now that you didn’t have in the past when you were smaller. You are not your frozen emotions from the past.

The path is to heal those frozen emotions and activate your agency through developing emotional intelligence and resilience. There are always people who manage to thrive, no matter the circumstances and you have that same capability within you. Who would you be if that became part of who you are? How would you feel, think and act differently? Do you believe there is a higher power that assists you? Do you believe that higher power will always guide you? What is your relationship to yourself? These are all pathways to healing the past and developing a strong foundational agency within you.

I offer 1:1 private sessions as well as group work. Identity Work will begin in January. Reach out if you would like more support.

xxMeg