Healing Forward: Collective Trauma and How Remembering Helps Us Heal
As a trauma therapist, a great book for addressing the history of collective trauma and how it impacts our bodies is Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. The book makes an important point; which is that our bodies carry history. Not just our personal history, but the stories, shock, and stress our families and communities have lived through. Understanding that past by naming it, feeling it safely, and honoring its impact can open real paths to healing in the present.
What is collective trauma?
Collective trauma happens when a harmful event, or a long series of events, hits a whole group of people, society, nation. It leaves psychological and bodily traces not only in individuals but across families and communities, often shaping identity, relationships, and the sense of safety for years. Researchers describe collective trauma as the shared psychological impact on a society or group, beyond any one person’s experience. (PMC)
Psychology recognizes that trauma can be individual, collective, and intergenerational, and that these forms can overlap and compound each other over time. (APA)
How the past lives in the body
Menakem explained how racialized trauma is not just an idea, it is embodied. The body tightens, braces, or numb-outs to survive danger, and these protective patterns can become habitual across generations. His work invites all of us, “bodies of culture,” white bodies, and mixed-heritage bodies, to notice and heal what lives in our nervous systems today.
Science supports the idea that stress and trauma reverberate across generations through multiple pathways, biology (including stress physiology and epigenetic processes), pregnancy environments, caregiving patterns, and social conditions. None of this means we are “doomed”; it means context matters, and healing can also ripple forward. (PMC)
Historical trauma, a related concept developed in Indigenous scholarship (e.g., Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart), describes cumulative, group-based trauma that spans generations. Understanding historical trauma helps us see today’s distress not as individual “defects” but as understandable responses to collective injury, and it points toward collective healing practices. (PubMed)
How the past impacts our bodies
Our bodily system
Menakem argues that white supremacy is not just ideology; it is a reflex pattern rehearsed in nervous systems, habits of bracing, avoidance, and control that get passed along socially and intergenerationally. Healing requires reconditioning the body, not only learning new ideas. High-demand groups similarly condition bodies via chronic fear, vigilance, and obedience rituals that “live” in the nervous system, not just in beliefs.Historical roots
He contends that for centuries in Europe, powerful white groups traumatized less-powerful white groups; later, in the Americas, those unhealed traumas were redirected through Black and Native bodies as race categories were formalized in the 17th century. This is part of how he explains the bodily charge behind racism. (Medium)Reflexes that confuse fear with danger, comfort with safety
A key nervous-system error Menakem describes in white bodies is the split-second conflation of internal fear with external danger, and the elevation of comfort as if it equals safety (which it does not). This has ended up fueling a withdrawal from difficult repair work. In high-control groups, this can show up as “purity” rules, surveillance, and silencing to protect the dominant group’s comfort (image, certainty, leader’s authority) rather than true safety for everyone. (OnBeing)
Why this matters for religious trauma and high-demand groups
If you have left a high-demand religion or controlling group, you have likely felt how community-level harm lands in the body: hypervigilance, shame, fear of dissent, phobic responses to “outsiders,” or a chronic pressure to conform. Cultic-abuse recovery emphasizes that recovery is both personal and social. It involves rebuilding trust, autonomy, and community safety. (ICSA)
Menakem’s somatic frame fits here: your body learned to survive in a system. Those survival strategies were intelligent. With care and practice, you can help your nervous system unlearn what it no longer needs.
What this looks like
Purity + comfort enforcement
Signal: “Keep the peace,” “Don’t rock the boat,” “Unity over division.”
Body effect: members clamp down on honest sensations (anger, grief, disgust), equating their own discomfort with wrongdoing. (CultRecover)
Fear → danger reflex
Signal: fast judgments of “unsafe/outsider,” panic around questions, phobic stories about leaving.
Body effect: adrenaline spikes, tunnel vision, obedience to rules that promise relief right now, even when no real danger is present.
Ritualized control of attention
Signal: constant meetings, curated information, leader-centric testimonies.
Body effect: reduced orientation capacity; members cannot settle or reality-test, making doctrine feel like oxygen. (Lifton: milieu control, sacred science, loaded language.) (Cult Recovery 101)
Fragility masquerading as safety
Signal: leaders demand soothing, censor dissent, label feedback “gossip” or “rebellion.”
Body effect: others over-function to protect leaders’ comfort; marginalized bodies absorb the stress load. (Resmaa)
Why cult survivors still feel pulled back (even when you “know better”)
Because the conditioning was somatic. Your body learned: “Belonging requires bracing,” “Questioning = exile,” “Comfort for them (i.e. the cult, purity ideals, white supremacy) = safety for me.” After exit, ordinary conflict or ambiguity can ignite the same reflexes because your nervous system was trained to equate relief with submission.
If your nervous system was trained to equate dissent with danger, race conversations can light up that same circuitry, even when you want to engage. That does not mean the work is wrong; it means your body needs titrated exposure with settling so participation becomes possible without overwhelm.
A few ideas from My Grandmother’s Hands
1) Healing is somatic (body-first), not just cognitive
Menakem’s work centers practices that settle the body. Simple, repeatable exercises to widen your window of tolerance and increase safety. This is not about “thinking your way out”; it is about feeling safe enough to do deeper work.
Try:
Orientation to safety: Let your eyes slowly scan the room. Name five neutral things you see. Feel the support of the chair beneath you.
Down-regulating breath: Longer exhale than inhale (e.g., in for 4, out for 6–8).
Vocal vibration: Gentle humming to stimulate the vagal system and soften bracing.
(Menakem offers many more step-by-step “settling” practices in the book. Consider working through them at your own pace.)
2) “Clean pain” vs. “dirty pain”
Menakem distinguishes clean pain, the courageous discomfort of telling the truth, setting boundaries, grieving honestly. Describing dirty pain as the suffering that comes from avoidance, denial, or reenacting harm. This lens can guide hard conversations about identity, family, and community change.
Try:
Before a tough boundary, ask: What’s the clean step here? What would I choose if I weren’t avoiding?
After the conversation, tend the body first (walk, breathe, hydrate) before debriefing mentally.
3) Somatic, embodied, ongoing practice
Menakem describes this as a living, body-based, communal practice of unlearning white-body supremacy and racialized trauma. The emphasis is on consistent, small, embodied actions that build capacity in ourselves and between us. (Resmaa)
Try (in community):
Start gatherings with two minutes of settling (eyes scanning, shoulders dropping, slower exhales).
Use a traffic-light check-in for the nervous system (Green/Yellow/Red) and adjust pace accordingly.
Agree on repair rituals: how you’ll pause, re-ground, and return if harm occurs.
How remembering helps healing, personally and collectively
Context reduces shame. When you understand that your anxiety, shutdown, or flares of anger may carry echoes of your family’s or community’s past, you are more likely to replace self-blame with care and skill-building.
Body-first practices create safety to feel and choose. When your body is less braced, you can access grief, compassion, and boundary-setting; which is clean pain and sustainable change.
Collective rituals mend collective wounds. Circles, memorials, truth-telling spaces, and culturally rooted practices help metabolize shared pain and build shared safety; which are core elements of trauma-informed approaches at the community level. (SAMHSA)
For those healing from high-demand religions/groups
Name the system. Learn about coercive control, thought-reform tactics, and loaded language. Understanding the system helps your body stop blaming itself.
Rebuild signals of safety. Practice consent in small ways: choose your own pace, beliefs, clothing, schedule.
Co-regulate with safe people. Join support spaces with others who “get it.” (ICSA curates survivor-focused resources and education.)
Therapies to consider: EMDR and IFS are commonly used for trauma processing and parts-informed work. Find trained clinicians via reputable directories.
When to seek extra support
If your nervous system stays stuck on “high” (panic, anger, insomnia) or “low” (numbness, hopelessness), or you’re struggling with daily function, a therapist trained in trauma can help you titrate the work safely.
Your body’s reactions make sense in light of the stories it carries: yours, your family’s, and your community’s. Remembering with compassion, practicing body-based settling, and creating collective rituals of care are not luxuries; they are how we heal forward. Menakem’s book is a powerful guide for doing that work with courage and tenderness.
Reach out to learn more or to start therapy.
Resources
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
Resources on culture, race, and historical trauma in youth and families
ICSA Education and supports for survivors of high-demand groups
Disclaimer:
⚠️ The content on this blog is intended for informational and educational purposes ONLY and should NOT be considered a substitute for personal professional mental health care, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading these posts does not establish a therapeutic relationship.
If you are currently in crisis, experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or others, or are in need of immediate support, please call 911 or contact a crisis line such as the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (U.S.) or access your local emergency services.
These blog posts are written to explore topics like trauma, religious deconstruction, cults, identity development, and mental wellness in a thoughtful and compassionate way. They may (or may not) resonate deeply, especially for those healing from complex trauma, but they are NOT meant to replace individualized therapy or medical care.
