Turning down the volume on trauma
The lens through which I propose we consider policy and each other
Recently, a podcast of The Lancet medical journal caught my attention - “Spotlight on Mental Health: Trauma, Recovery, and Justice.” I want to highlight and share it here, in an effort to break down the silos between social justice and health work.
As I listened to the episode, I recalled a season of my work life when I attended execution vigils via Zoom. In this stretch of about 8 months every execution in the United States was noted in my calendar, and I would show up online an hour in advance to vigil. Although I’d been doing death penalty abolition work for over a decade, this was new to me, and it impacted me in ways I didn’t anticipate. It was an embodiment of the work. I had a different relationship with each execution - intead of reading the news or emails in collegial threads the following day, I sat through each unfolding - which included torturous delays, one man even surviving his execution.
During these hours on Zoom, one after another, I developed a particular sense of failure. Not a personal failure - but that each macabre ritual was a big failing grade of our country, of our culture, of our systems. The medical care, the schooling, the communities, the economic landscape, the drug and alcohol abuse, the physical and emotional abuse - the person being executed was there because of a series of failures so massive that they spilled out beyond that one person into the community as manifested in the death(s) that landed them on death row.1 And then the execution ritual itself was a continued spilling out of trauma - now reaching prison personnel, journalists, and the community at large. We had monumentally failed this individual - and then doubled down on a punitive model, earning compound interest on abuses that stretch back generations.
The podcast “Spotlight on Mental Health: Trauma, Recovery, and Justice” is a conversation led by Sophia Davis, Senior Editor at The Lancet Psychiatry, who is joined by Judith Lewis Herman, Duane Booysen, and Angela Sweeney.
“Trauma happens to individuals, but it happens within social contexts. And the same goes for healing and recovery from trauma.”
-Sophia Davis
Early in the conversation, Sophia Davis says, “Trauma happens to individuals, but it happens within social contexts. And the same goes for healing and recovery from trauma.” Sophia acknowledged that Judith Herman’s work inspired that reflection, and indeed later on in the conversation Judith says, “when you’re dealing with a difficult social context, individualizing treatment may not be the way to go.”
Angela Sweeney, who introduced herself in the podcast as a “survivor researcher,” says that loss of control is at the core of abusive experiences. In talking about “trauma-informed” care, she says that “trauma-informed” can’t be defined too rigidly, or it fails to be trauma-informed because there is a social and political context to consider. Nothing with control and coercion at its heart can really be trauma-informed.
Judith talks a bit about her 2023 book “Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice,” which was shaped by listening to survivors and addresses the importance of social justice in recovery. She asserts that if trauma is a social and political problem, there must be a social and political way to deal with it.
Safety always involves other people.
-Judith Herman
Judith discussed how trauma isolates and shames the victim, and described three positions - that of perpetrator, victim, and bystander. Safety always involves other people, and perhaps even more that the perpetrator/victim dyad, it is the relationship between victim and bystander that most needs repair to achieve healing. There is a need for the bystanders - the community - to acknowledge the harm and call it wrong. She reported that the justice system re-traumatizes people in numerous ways and invites us to imagine a different form of justice.
Judith touches on the inter-relatedness of many movements that I hope to continually highlight and synergize in this Substack. She says that the trauma field has always depended on broad human rights movements, and ultimately there are two templates of relationship: tyrannical control or mutuality.
So, back to those execution vigils and our collective failing grade. How do we turn down the trauma to prevent and better respond to violence? We move away from coercion and towards consent. We address systems and structures that are coercive and recognize such things as poverty, racism, and xenophobia as traumatic. This could mean: parental leave when bringing home a new child, guaranteed basic income and affordable housing, daycare for all, free college tuition, universal healthcare with free mental health and substance abuse treatment. Abusive systems are violent systems / if we want to lower violence, we need to lower abuse / coercion and control are a main feature of abuse / lowering coercion and control in our communities and systems will lower violence.
Coda
In the podcast, Duane Booysen asks the poignant question, “What do we do first? Do we engage in social justice first? Do we heal and recover the person first?”
I appreciate Duane’s question here, and the exasperation/sense of overwhelm in the face of ongoing trauma. And I think we do both things first. “We” being a community or movement of people addressing harms. Some people will focus on the immediate and very personal and individualized needs such as: does this person have shoes? dinner? shelter? And other people will address law, policy, culture, narrative.
I am reminded of this passage of the Bible (New International Reader’s Version, accessed at this website):
12 There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body. It is the same with Christ. 13 We were all baptized by one Holy Spirit. And so we are formed into one body. It didn’t matter whether we were Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free people. We were all given the same Spirit to drink. 14 So the body is not made up of just one part. It has many parts.
15 Suppose the foot says, “I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 16 And suppose the ear says, “I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? 18 God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. 19 If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? 20 As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body.
21 The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 In fact, it is just the opposite. The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are the ones we can’t do without. 23 The parts that we think are less important we treat with special honor. The private parts aren’t shown. But they are treated with special care. 24 The parts that can be shown don’t need special care. But God has put together all the parts of the body. And he has given more honor to the parts that didn’t have any. 25 In that way, the parts of the body will not take sides. All of them will take care of one another. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy.
27 You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it.
The question of what to do first is a sincere one. And sometimes there will be a demand about what to do first. But if a hand is directed to smell, or an eye is required to taste, things are going to get confusing.
People engaged in justice work often see trauma in their day to day work. Many engaged in justice work were drawn to the work because they experienced trauma in their personal lives. Indeed, the in-fighting among people who engage in this work is another manifestation of trauma - and as you engage in such proximity to trauma, secondary trauma grows.
If you are working on law and policy, it isn’t helpful to get angry at the people literally feeding or ministering to their neighbors or visiting people in prison because they don’t show up to your lobby day or hearing. If you are handing out warm clothes and food, it is not helpful to resent the people in the legislature or courtrooms for not being at your side. You can do your part, and allow others to do their parts.
How do we turn down the trauma in justice work? Here also, we need to move away from coercion and towards consent. Using coercive or abusive strategies won’t help win campaigns aimed at keeping us safe.
Not every person who is executed or on death row is guilty. Since 1973, 192 people have been exonerated from death rows across the US, and the US has executed people with credible claims of innocence, including as Cameron Todd Willingham and Troy Davis.