Opinion | America’s unspoken trauma

Today’s political “symptoms” are the direct result of underlying trauma that remains unhealed in our nation’s ancestral history. Unsplash. DANIEL PEARSON, Photo Editor.

This piece expands upon the TEDx talk “How to Heal America’s Traumatized Brain.” The talk was researched and written by Catherine Mysliwiec and Jay Kumar; it was delivered by Jay Kumar.

It’s been a little over a year since a violent mob of Americans attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attempting to overturn the results of a democratic election and block the peaceful transfer of power — a longstanding and celebrated American tradition. 

Still, there remains a missing element in our national discourse around the tragic events of that day. It comes from the field of trauma research, specifically that of “complex trauma” (cPTSD).

Distinct from simple post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma doesn’t necessarily have to accompany or follow a specific, definable traumatic experience or event. 

Catherine Mysliwiec, senior communication studies major

Rather, it can lie buried in one’s psyche for years, invisible and unacknowledged as “trauma,” yet still bleeding into and shaping every aspect of one’s emotional and psychological wellbeing.

If this trauma remains untreated and unaddressed, it will inevitably surface as symptoms – of anger, rage, addiction, depression, anxiety, even violence – for which there seems no immediate explanation.  

On a larger scale, violence, extremism, and radicalization are responses to unacknowledged and repressed trauma which have too reached a “boiling over point” and are now manifesting as “symptoms,” which – to the untrained eye – may seem just as random and difficult to explain. 

From the lens of brain science and behavior, the attack on the U.S. Capitol was the inevitable eruption of repressed trauma which has existed in America’s collective consciousness since our nation’s founding.

This is America’s unhealed trauma over identity and belonging. It relates to unresolved questions: what does it mean to be American? To which Americans do the aspirations established in the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — truly apply? 

This trauma exists in America’s psyche because the answers to these questions have evolved over time. 

While the notion of American identity was originally filtered through the social hierarchy of white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant landowners, the nation’s history has been continuously shaped by social movements advancing a more inclusive version of America.

Today, we celebrate the social progress resulting from these movements, but the original trauma necessitating them often remains unprocessed in our collective psyche.

However, trauma doesn’t go away when it’s repressed from historical narrative and collective memory. It continues to play out in the present until it is brought into conscious awareness and healed. In erasing or revising certain portions of American history, we have ensured our nation’s struggle with identity continues to pervade every aspect of society.

The problem is that, today, we are not talking about it. Though invisible and unspoken, this unhealed trauma underlies our most contentious political debates, from Confederate monuments to the teaching of Black history in schools. 

It’s only through integrating the neuropsychology of trauma into America’s suffering that we recognize America’s true challenge to healing today. While it is important to identify the symptoms of trauma, this alone is not enough. We have to heal America’s “core trauma” as well. At present, we are only focused on its worsening expressions.

The longer America’s core trauma is left untreated, the worse its symptoms — of increasing polarization, radicalization and extremism — will become.​​ The danger of not healing this core trauma is the very real possibility that what was only narrowly avoided Jan. 6 — the collapse of American democracy itself — will, eventually, be accomplished. 

Studies reveal how trauma disrupts the brain’s interior, resulting in both structural and functional changes. Metaphorically, if we were to scan America's brain under an MRI machine, we would observe the same impacts of complex trauma on America’s brain.

PTSD weakens the communication and connection between the brain’s right and left hemispheres. We can similarly think of this neural process as driving the political polarization in America’s psyche.

Furthermore, PTSD is observed to enlarge and activate the amygdala, the tiny gland in our primal survival brain which governs threat perception, heightening our sensitivity to messages which provoke anger and fear. 

Exacerbating this mental vulnerability are technology and social media companies, whose algorithms both drive engagement on their platforms but can simultaneously drive users into increasingly extremist, racist and radicalized content.

As such, today’s technology and social media landscape is helping to transform a “polarized” America into an increasingly angry, paranoid and ultimately radicalized one. 

Unlike the constructive anger which is healthy in interpersonal relationships, this type of anger provides no “catharsis” once it’s served its purpose. Instead, it continues building inside us, becoming a constant, mythologized feeling of rage at groups we deem the “other.”

So, what does the neuropsychology of trauma tell us about healing America’s brain?

A traumatized brain heals through neuroplasticity. This is the process by which the brain’s neurons rewire and reconfigure new networks. It begins with individual neurons forging new connections on a local level. Taken together, this process literally restructures the brain, restoring the communication between the brain’s right and left hemispheres. 

If each American symbolizes a neuron in America’s brain, we heal America’s core trauma in the exact same way. We start at the local level: in our neighborhoods, schools and communities. 

We also recognize that narratives of division being sold at the national level are often exaggerated. Thus, we prioritize nurturing our social connections locally – in real life, face-to-face.

If each American takes up this responsibility, even if it only means small changes at first, then we too will rebuild a new civic and political infrastructure in America’s brain. This process for healing America’s trauma starts with us.

Americans are not powerless to heal the state of American politics and democracy today. From the lens of the neuropsychology of trauma, in fact, “We the People,” in our everyday lives and communities, may be the only thing that can.