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Why do so many of us feel so isolated in an age when technology allows us to easily communicate between people across vast distances?
Thomas Hübl, a teacher, author, and international facilitator, sees this pattern of growing global isolation, alienation, and division as “a manifestation of collective trauma.”
Provided by: Thomas Hübl
Her upcoming book, Attuned, shows how people can heal from trauma in today’s difficult world.
The effects of this trauma are so ubiquitous and insidious that, in his forthcoming book Attuned: Practicing Interdependent to Heal Our Trauma — and Our World, he writes, “We don’t think it’s normal.” “I came to think that it was a thing,” he wrote. This is exactly the situation. What exactly is a family? Exactly what people are like. Exactly what the world is like. ”
To face the world’s complex challenges, Hubl argues, we need to address and heal that trauma.Challenges such as increasing political authoritarianism and political, racial, ethnic, religious, and sectarian issues Conflict demands new levels of human cooperation.
Recognizing that “nearly the entire human story depends on the quality of our connections with each other,” he challenges each of us to process trauma to restore balance and promote healing. is recommended. By doing so, we can “deliver light to a world in distress.”
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. The meditation is below.
CNN: Why is the trauma of our ancestors still present among us today?
Thomas Hübl: Although in the West our existence is often seen as highly individualized and separate, we are part of many generations that came before us. Despite the age listed on our passports, our bodies have been built over hundreds of thousands of years of living, and every ancestor has added something to who we are today. All of their achievements, including rational thinking, emotional complexity, bodily functions, and self-healing, are within us. Part of it is intergenerational learning that helps us recognize the dangers of the world. However, unintegrated trauma can be passed on as hypervigilance, stress, and maladaptive fear.
CNN: Where is trauma stored in our bodies?
Hubl: First, trauma is often confused with adversity itself, but in reality, trauma is how our nervous systems respond to distressing experiences. This reaction has intelligent protection features. Our nervous system is trying to keep us safe. But if you don’t learn how to integrate your trauma, the symptoms can have serious side effects.
Dasha Gaian
Huebl said that while our bodies can respond to trauma to keep us safe, “if we don’t learn how to integrate trauma, the symptoms can have serious side effects.” Masu.
We have known for a long time that we will go through wars and difficult situations. influence subsequent generations. We can now look at this scientifically through epigenetics. Epigenetics describes how DNA is activated differently based on lived experiences. For example, studies on mice have shown that traumatized mice transmit symptoms to their offspring over five to six generations.
We are learning more about how epigenetic transmission increases the fear and stress receptors that literally exist in our bodies.
CNN: What are the signs that ancestral trauma may be affecting you?
Hubl: Trauma is often expressed as exaggerated reactivity. This may include aggression and verbal abuse towards those whom you blame for your discomfort. Another symptom is numbness that can lead to withdrawal and apathy from others. We become apathetic and isolated.
When we have an overwhelming experience that our nervous system can’t handle, we instantly lose touch with life. Our stress levels skyrocket, triggering a strong fight-or-flight response. Further stress can cause our nervous system to shut down and block off parts of our consciousness, like water sealing off a damaged part of a ship.
Shutdown of the nervous system acts like anesthesia. We feel that our bodies are decreasing. Unless we learn how to wean ourselves off anesthesia, we will continue to walk through the rest of our lives with little awareness of our bodies and what is and is not healthy for us. These reactions become entrenched in our nervous system, and triggering situations can cause a traumatic response.
If we notice these symptoms in ourselves, we are more likely to have trauma from events in our own lives, or the after-effects of trauma in our ancestors.
CNN: How can we tell whether the symptoms we’re experiencing come from our own lives or from the lives of our ancestors?
Hubl: Rather than trying to understand whose trauma we are experiencing, it is important to cultivate curiosity about its triggers. Rather than attributing our experiences to this or that situation and creating a narrative, it is best to connect with our bodies. Let’s start by noticing the following: “Well, I’m feeling my stress levels rising.” Next, connect with the stress you’re feeling and identify where it resides in your body.
First of all, it is effective to increase your body awareness during stress-free moments. For many of us, our bodies are like great cars, but we’ve never read the manual. In good moments, ask yourself what feels good in your body. Taking 2-5 minutes to do this regularly will help you learn more about your body.
This practice can show us where our bodies are most resourceful, grounded, and open. Identifying these areas will help you when a trigger moment occurs because connecting first to areas of your body that usually feel good will help ground you. Second, you can reduce stress by slowing down your breathing. It’s not always comfortable, but I’ve learned how to deal with stress consciously. This process helps to downregulate the nervous system to further relax.
After months of practice, the relaxation process that used to take 5 minutes now takes about 15 seconds because you have developed the muscles to use it consciously. This exercise helps you regulate functions of your nervous system that you may not have been using because you weren’t aware of them before.
CNN: When many people think of trauma, they usually think of emotional symptoms. How do they fit into your healing approach?
Hubl: I believe that all mental health issues are deeply rooted in the body. Many people fail when they try to treat trauma through introspection through talk therapy. Because trauma exists on the other side of the story. At their best, stories are just a gateway into emotional, physical, and sometimes ancestral experiences. We need to resolve these through our bodies.
CNN: What does it take to heal from trauma?
Hubl: Much of the healing from trauma occurs most effectively in interaction with others. Specifically, those who have been trained to remain attuned to their own and others’ physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational experiences through the practice of whole-body listening. This is because wounds often result from inappropriate relationships such as violence, abuse, and neglect.
Those of us who do trauma integration work have learned to train our nervous systems to tune into the hurting parts of others. Facilitator therapists are able to create connections with traumatized individuals that were missing when the trauma occurred and meet the client with exactly what they needed at the time. Providing a supportive relational environment, which was missing at the time, helps release the wounded parts of them that were frozen in time by the trauma.
CNN: How does trauma affect society as a whole?
Hubl: Look at how politicians yell at each other. That’s not normal. Wounded. Polarization, racism, inequality, these things are not normal. This is a hurting world.
When we are in a healthy relationship flow, I can feel you and I can feel how you feel about me. But when I’m hurting, I can’t feel you, and I can’t feel if you feel me. This disconnect touches the trauma and can cause us to overreact. This feeling of separation can escalate to exclusion. So the idea is that there’s a completely wrong group of people that you don’t want to be associated with.
People who “otherize” cause serious social problems. Nothing can be resolved if polarization is too strong. This tendency in society is itself a strong collective trauma symptom. If we look a little deeper into how exactly we experience the person we see as a stranger, we often see that we are actually afraid.
CNN: How can we better connect with the people around us?
Hubl: We often try to avoid difficult interactions and situations. But in the long run, difficult moments are our teachers. There’s always something to learn. One helpful habit is to be curious about difficult situations.
Instead of putting the blame on others, explore the experiences we have with them. This is where the real potential for change lies. You may not be able to change others, but you can change your relationship with them. With practice and doing your own inner work, you become freer, more fluid, and have more choices in how you respond.
CNN: What habits help us heal?
Hubl: If you have a few moments throughout the day between meetings and other errands, take a moment to breathe and do a quick check-in with your body to understand your current state of stress. This helps train the nervous system to strengthen the pathway to self-awareness and create inner mindfulness.
I practice this same curious inquiry when interacting with others, exploring the feeling of “I feel you and I feel how you feel me.” Sometimes it becomes easier to feel the other person’s feelings. Even when things are more difficult, I don’t judge myself as a failure. I just make it a habit to strengthen the muscles of consciousness that create a space of safety, trust, and mutual understanding in relationships.
View this interactive content on CNN.com
Another recommendation is to take notes every time you encounter a difficult situation, such as a conversation that doesn’t go well with your boss or something that goes wrong with a client. In the evening, take five minutes to consider the following questions. “What was hard for you today?” Don’t just think, listen to how your body felt when that thing happened and try to recreate those moments a little.
Allowing your nervous system to digest that trigger moment and increasing your awareness of that moment allows you to utilize the trigger as a teacher, rather than simply trying to avoid it or reproducing the same difficulty day in and day out. can lead to useful insights.
We live in times of incredible upheaval and unimaginable promise. By engaging even a small number of people in collective healing, we can create the critical mass needed to create real change.
jessica duron He is a Brooklyn, New York-based journalist, book collaborator, writing coach, and author of Saved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Lift and My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.
