I’ve been asked why I put the word “modern” in the title of my book. It has to do with a specific trauma of our times. Humans are encountering new kinds of traumatic stress, but also new ways to handle it.
I’ve written that the non-responsive leadership to the climate emergency is a form of dissociation. If we pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, hopefully it will go away. It’s clearly not an effective strategy, but most coping skills are only short term solutions.
So much of what’s happening at the individual level we can see within systems. Our addiction to fast fashion, to modern comforts. Our need to numb and self soothe with whatever we have been taught, whether that’s food or alcohol or weed. Or external validation. Our predilection to look after our family unit over the common good.
Never before has the human race been faced with a knowing that we are directly responsible for mass extinction. And those who are causing it the least are suffering the most in these early stages. But that leaders, politicians and lobbyists are making choices that will harm future generations. Their own kids.
Racism, sexism, ableism, and other ways that we harm marginalized communities have been a part of modern constructs for many decades. But never before have we been a witness to what happens globally. To see the knee on the neck. To see the bullets hit the back. To watch the hurricane tear through the shacks. To watch people floating through the flood zone. Social media has created this common experience, but also amplified our collective trauma.
The polarities have intensified our fight and flight responses. Aggression and violence. Othering and dehumanization.
In modern times, this access can also help us build communities. Build revolutions. I can feel the shifts changing in the psychological sciences. I see it as my social media moniker, TikTokTraumaDoc. As a western trained physician, now working primarily as a trauma therapist, I can see the paradigms of the old views cracking. Epigenetics. ACEs. Polyvagal Theory. An awareness that pathologizing normal responses to these modern times harms all of us.
I’m excited to be a part of what vicarious resilience and collective posttraumatic growth could look like.
This post was simultaneously added to my Substack. I host a Reddit channel about modern trauma that will go live on May 2 with my book release.
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