The biggest election issue no one's naming

Trauma healing expert Dr. Peter Levine redefines the stakes of the U.S. presidential race.

The U.S. presidential election is being portrayed as a choice between democracy and fascism, and there is one better option for people who want peaceful transitions of power and control over their bodies. But, let’s be clear: There are no angels on either side of the aisle, and one vote is not going to fix the fear and division that have many Americans reaching for guns, drugs and other numbing agents. To do that, we need to confront an issue that affects all of us, yet that politicians and the mainstream media often overlook.

We need to talk about trauma.

“Probably the most important question in society is how to heal trauma and how not to pass on trauma to the next generation, and the next and next and next,” Dr. Peter Levine, a leading expert in the field of trauma healing, told me when I asked him what journalists and voters should be pressing politicians on this election season.

Trauma is a psychological injury that, untreated, can hurt a person’s physical health and relationships. It’s caused by a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. Things that many of us take for granted are lost, such as a sense of safety, control and human dignity.

“In trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities,” psychiatrist and researcher Judith Herman wrote in her groundbreaking book, Trauma and Recovery.

About 70 percent of us will be exposed to a potentially traumatic experience during our lifetimes. For some, this will be physical, sexual or emotional abuse. It may be neglect, like living with a parent grappling with poverty, substance abuse or mental health issues, including their own trauma. It could be witnessing or experiencing violence. Suffering systemic oppression and discrimination such as racism can be trauma-inducing. And sudden, unexpected loss, such as a loved one’s death, as well as war, conflict and climate catastrophes also can cause psychological wounds.

If you read this list and ticked off a few, I’m with you. If this doesn’t resonate, I hope you’re still curious. Financially and politically, it makes sense for all of us to care since our laws, policies and practices can make these conditions better or worse for individuals, communities and even the planet.

The costs of psychological injuries

The United States is spending $14 trillion a year on adult health conditions related to adverse childhood experiences, according to a 2023 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That’s $88,000 a year per affected adult, and it doesn’t even touch the costs of lost productivity and medical expenses related to the trauma people experience from rampant gun violence and racial and economic inequality.

Plus, studies have shown that when formative traumatic experiences stir up fear and anger, people can be more open to authoritarian leaders who promise stability, security and punitive public policies. Why? People displace the anger from their personal lives to politics, according to psychologists Michael Milburn and Sheree Conrad, authors of Raised to Rage. Understandable, but not good. Authoritarians remove the rights and freedoms of vulnerable and marginalized people so that others can feel stable and secure, but eventually, no one is “free.” Autocratic leaders rely on fearmongering, misinformation, chaos and division to stay in power.

Former President Donald Trump is a master of this, as are Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and China’s Communist Party. As David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post wrote in his Pulitzer-winning editorial series Annals of Autocracy, dictators are learning from each other.

If they can learn, we can, too. Stopping the global democratic recession requires understanding that polarization and conflict are the main symptoms of collective trauma, according to psychologist Jack Saul, the founding director of the New York-based International Trauma Studies Program. He explained to me that collective trauma involves a group of people experiencing physical or structural violence and loss of morale, social cohesion and the ability to discern between good opportunities and real dangers.

Voting through pain

That’s why Levine’s perspective is important this election season, and every one that follows. He treats pain, and we have a lot of it.

“I think trauma is the least understood, most belittled form of dysfunction in our health and in society,” Levine told me. “Until we realize that and start saying ‘This has to be the first priority, the highest priority,’ we're just going to continue to reenact it again and again and again. We're doing the same crazy thing and expecting a different outcome.”

Levine is one of the most influential yet understated voices in the field. While Judith Herman’s groundbreaking work created a foundation for understanding complex trauma and its effects on individuals and society, and psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, helped mainstream the idea that emotional wounds can cause physical problems, Levine helped globalize a body-oriented approach to healing the wounds. With doctorates in medical biophysics and psychology, as well as wisdom drawn from indigenous and tribal communities, Levine developed Somatic Experiencing. The therapy that derives its name from the Ancient Greek word “soma” for “body” is now taught in 44 countries to treat how stress and shock impact the nervous system. I interviewed Levine earlier this year at a San Diego conference and semi-retirement party co-hosted by his ERGOS Institute of Somatic Education and The Embody Lab, which is working to share somatic healing knowledge and experience with a broader community.

Our systems need care

I’ll get back to our political system in a moment, but first we need to understand the nervous system. It sends signals between the brain and the rest of the body, including internal organs. When a person experiences a deeply distressing event, their nervous system has trouble coping normally. It essentially short-circuits, which can affect a person’s balance, spatial orientation and how they perceive touch and movement. Emotional regulation and memory processing can be disrupted, too.

Ever heard someone say, “I just feel off,” after a super intense experience? There’s good reason for that.

An overwhelmed nervous system swings between two extremes: hyperarousal and hypoarousal, or shutdown. Hyperarousal can feel like anxiety, agitation or being super alert. Shutdown spurs emotional numbness, a sense of helplessness and disassociation — checking out. Both states can make it seem like threats are everywhere. These are psychological symptoms, but anyone who’s had tense shoulders, lashed out at others or tried to control things when they’re angry or afraid knows that stress isn’t just in their head. Untreated toxic stress in the longterm can even cause inflammation that contributes to disease.

Looking back to look forward

Hurt people hurt people, and the U.S. is stuck in a rinse and repeat cycle of harm. Let’s glance back in history to see how: The U.S. systems ostensibly designed to meet society’s needs were created by a bunch of traumatized White Europeans who fled religious persecution, famine and poverty and arrived in North America anxious, agitated and afraid. They killed and controlled folks they worried could physically or economically threaten them and shaped laws and norms to rationalize their violence and oppression. They treated women as property and decided their enemies were people who looked different than them — Brown and Black instead of White.

White European Americans tried to wipe out the locals by committing genocide and stealing their land, traumatizing generations of Indigenous communities who now suffer higher rates of depression and substance abuse. They kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved people from Africa to work the stolen land, traumatizing generations of African Americans who suffer greater health disparities and lower life expectancy than White Americans today. Over time, when Black people were freed from slavery, and poor White Americans became frustrated they didn’t have the wealth or privilege of the elite, the people in power made policies to control them both. They just made sure to blame people of color and immigrants, not their policies, for why low-income White people felt bad.

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Everyone is carrying the legacy of trauma in the U.S., including the descendants of White Europeans. It would be hard for a group of people who fled persecution or killed and dehumanized others to not pass toxic stress and unhealthy coping skills to their kids. Unfortunately, some conservatives are trying to ban the teaching of this history, and the Republican Party under Trump has exploited people’s pain to stoke fear and division as White Americans navigate cultural shifts, changing demographics and economic dislocation in Rust Belt cities.

Collective trauma is making it harder for us to solve collective problems, including climate change, economic inequality, gun violence and the teen mental health crisis. That’s the bad news.

Healing America’s body and mind

“The good news is it doesn't have to be a life sentence,” Levine told me. “These traumas get passed on from generation to generation to generation, but so do great amounts of knowledge and wisdom. Given the support and the right tools, we can again move through trauma and come back into life.” Now in his 80s, Levine has spent much of his life helping people feel safe enough to reconnect with themselves and the vitality that was temporarily lost in the trauma.

I asked Levine if the United States was a body and mind, how would he treat it? He recommended two approaches for people: “They need to be in their bodies more. That's one thing for sure. But what I want people to know more than anything else is that this is something that we hold in the collective arm. Because it's held in the collective, we also need to heal it in the collective.”

Remember how an overwhelmed nervous system can swing from feeling anxious to numbed out? Well, that’s the baseline for a lot of folks, including babies exposed to toxic stress in utero. One step toward healing trauma is to notice different sensations in the body to begin discerning whether one’s “normal” is an agitated or constricted state. A person might sense butterflies or knots in the stomach, a tight throat, dizziness or tremors in their arms or legs. Their nervous system isn’t doing anything wrong. It’s trying to help them respond to danger, whether the threat was in the past or is ever-present.

Relational repair

Tuning into the body’s sensations is like following a map toward what needs compassion and care to begin to feel safe again. Safety may feel elusive for people who are facing active harm or are living under policies and practices that threaten their autonomy and very existence. In the U.S., this is the case for many people of color, women, and LGBTQIA people. Still, there is room to ease some suffering by taking what author and somatically trained coach

Kai Cheng Thom

refers to as “the sacred pause.”

When faced with a choice, she suggests taking conscious breaths, scanning the body and noticing whether the sensations are saying, “Yes, no, maybe.” That inner voice allows a person to choose the intensity of their engagement. Starting slowly, with lower stakes decisions, a little bit at a time, is a powerful way to begin reconnecting with what’s been lost or taken away with trauma.

Because psychological injuries and their physical manifestations rupture connections — with ourselves, others and even countries — the repair requires tenderly healing relationships. Noticing physical sensations and taking pause is work that individuals can begin by themselves. In Levine’s view, though, it’s better not to do all the work alone. Trauma is not so much what happened to us, he shared with me, but rather what we hold inside in the absence of a present, empathetic, connected other. “We really need others to witness what happened,” he said.

On a personal level, a friend, relative, therapist or even a loving pet may be that non-judgmental witness to one’s grief, anger and journey through it. On a community level, it can help if neighbors, coworkers or even the mail carrier recognize that something terrible happened and respond in a supportive way. On a systemic level, having institutions, laws and culture acknowledge and address how policies and practices perpetuate traumatic experiences and conditions over time is vital to individual and collective healing. One way this happens is through elections.

Step by step, baby

I know this is a lot. Perhaps so overwhelming that you might be reaching for that numbing agent. But let’s pause and recognize what we’re doing in this very moment. We’re connecting the dots between psychology, physiology, biology, sociology, politics, economics and history. Being curious is how we heal. This is the work. Step by step, little by little.

Believe me, I know it’s scary to even acknowledge how we carry trauma or contribute to it. But this has huge payoffs. New, positive experiences can help retrain the brain and soothe the nervous system. And people can increase their potential for a healthier, more joy-filled, purpose-driven life. If “self-care” seems selfish, think of the country. Political polarization, a manifestation of collective trauma, is a cause of significant stress and anxiety in the U.S.

Reality check

We need to work together to improve this neoliberal capitalist, flawed democracy where the military industrial complex, technology and pharmaceutical companies are allowed to profit off fear, division and chaos that make people spend more to feel less. As divided as Americans may feel at times, they can agree on one thing: Both major U.S. political parties have created conditions that perpetuate harm.

More veterans and military service members die by suicide than in battle. The Biden administration is fueling intergenerational trauma by aiding Israel’s alleged genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in response to last year’s deadly Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. The former Trump administration’s corporate tax cuts reduced social safety nets, and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority stripped millions of women of their ability to control their own body.

“We need to come together and speak truth to power, because power will eventually listen if they can relate it to their own lives,” Levine said. “Little by little, I think we can help people open to their trauma and the trauma of their families. The thing that we hold in common is our humanity.”

Answering the call

The Republican and Democratic parties aren’t completely ignoring humanity. The Biden administration has made unprecedented investments in mental health, helped pass major gun safety legislation and supports expanding the Affordable Care Act. Under Trump, the Republican-led Congress passed legislation to address the opioid crisis and support criminal justice reform. On the state level, legislators in Hawaii have proposed a bill to establish a trauma-informed pilot program in the Department of Education. And in West Virginia, a member of the House of Delegates proposed creating an intergenerational poverty task force.

These are just a few of the many efforts that ordinary people with extraordinary wisdom are taking to improve conditions for all of us. They’ve taken the time to understand that breaking cycles of trauma requires both preventing injuries and supporting people who’ve suffered them. And they recognize that even those who’ve caused harm have the right and possibility to heal, too.

These wise souls could be any of us. They should be all of us. So, whether you’re casting a ballot in November, or deciding how to spend your day, consider pausing to notice what your body is telling you. That inner voice you're hearing? It could be world-changing.

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Hi, I’m Kate…

I’m a journalist and documentary filmmaker focused on the relationship between mental health and democracy. At The Washington Post, I won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with colleagues for our coverage of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack, and pioneered a mental health column and short doc unit. In 2024, I opted out of the corporate media tumult to create Invisible Threads, a company committed to wellbeing through narrative transformation. We uncover individual, communal and systemic stories that keep us sick and separate, and uplift ways to heal. I’m also a fellow and journalist-in-residence at Georgetown University’s The Red House. This chapter deepens work I’ve pursued for two decades, from reporting on an authoritarian regime in post-genocide Cambodia, to the decline of democracy in Hong Kong, to the 2021 U.S. insurrection. By subscribing to this newsletter, you’ll receive new columns, interviews and resources every couple weeks.

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What bowled me over…

My home state, Maine. I’ve been head down working too much, but when I look around, the views are pretty good. Below is Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth.

What I’d invite you to explore…

Authoritarian Playbook: A Media Guide — Written for journalists but useful for everyone.

The Surgeon General Has New Social Media Guidelines. Minnesota Already Made Some of Them Into Law. — 

Ravi Iyer

via After Babel

The Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to create conditions to prevent and heal trauma across communities and systems.

What I’d invite you to do…

Give yourself an actual pat on the back for digesting the information in this essay. Different parts will sink in at different times. This is hard work. You’re doing it.