Note: This article may be distressing for some readers. A list of resources is at the bottom of the page, including the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This post was updated on Mar. 25, 2024.
I saw a video on Instagram recently titled “Donald Trump’s Ohio rally was totally unhinged.” In it, Democratic strategist Keith Edwards muses, “This is becoming a regular series, I guess, where I bring you the wildest things he says every week.”
I didn’t watch the rest. It’s not that I don’t care whether Americans elect an indicted, authoritarian demagogue to lead our democracy. It’s because my nervous system gets overwhelmed when I think about the violence Trump inspires. While Keith is smart to try to shake people off their phone and into the voting booth, Americans need to engage in democracy beyond an emergency state.
We need to find and respect our self-worth.
self-worth (noun) : a sense of one’s own value as a human being. (Merriam-Webster)
I started looking seriously for my self-worth three years ago on a ranch outside Nashville. There were trees bent by storms, a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace and a bonfire for burning paper written with the lies we tell ourselves.
It wasn’t vacation or a dream. It was intensive group therapy to help stabilize people living with the effects of trauma. I’d been struggling with depression, panic attacks, hypervigilance and flashbacks for six months since covering the Trump-incited Jan. 6 attack for The Washington Post. I was sick with post-traumatic stress and not sure I wanted to be in this world if it meant feeling terrified all the time.
My therapist suggested I’d benefit from being somewhere I could feel completely safe — surrounded by people who understand how trauma affects our minds, bodies and relationships. I would not get that at work. Although managers circulated mental health information, trauma was still deeply misunderstood in some corners of the newsroom. In my case, the head of human resources treated my PTSD as a problem to be solved with a demotion. Senior leadership eventually would rectify and learn from this. But in the early, isolated, unvaccinated months of 2021, the punishment made my condition significantly worse.
Of course, this isn’t just newsrooms. Uninformed HR in a workplace is a doctor in a hospital, police on the street, a guard in a prison. Trauma is dismissed by people, institutions and systems that don’t understand it or aren’t willing or able to acknowledge what it would mean for them. Nkem Ndefo, a registered nurse, nurse midwife and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, helped me realize that if you acknowledge another person’s wound, you might recognize your own or realize you’ve caused someone else’s, intentionally or not. This would be inconvenient and perhaps worse, painful.
trauma (noun) : any experience that asks or requires us to sacrifice our safety, dignity, and/or belonging. Often, it is an experience that asks or requires us to choose one of these at the cost of the others. (Nkem Ndefo, MSN, CNM, RN)
What does trauma have to do with self-worth or you or democracy? Everything.
Reality check
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control consider childhood trauma one of America’s greatest public health threats. Even if you grew up unscathed, most adults will experience trauma in their lifetime. And don’t forget, our political, social and economic systems were designed by traumatized people fleeing persecution or poverty in Europe. They built a “new world” by displacing, killing, kidnapping, enslaving and raping Africans and indigenous peoples.
One didn’t have to exact or endure the violence to suffer from it. Our ancestors were swimming in toxic stress that has filled the cracks and crevices of homes, hospitals and schools for generations. Did my ancestors enslave men and women? No. Did they mask the discomfort of being poor, unwelcome immigrants with substance abuse, silence and violence? Yes. Did they model this for their children, who modeled it for theirs? Yes.
trauma (noun) : a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. (Gabor Maté, MD)
Decades of research and practice by trauma experts Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Gabor Maté, MD, Peter Levine, PhD and so many others have helped show that these invisible wounds make people question the validity of their feelings, believe they deserve to suffer or blame a scapegoat for their discomfort.
We play happy or pick fights, often both. It’s the American way.
The lies we tell ourselves temporarily protect us from a painful truth — someone or something hurt us beyond what we could handle — but over time, they chip away at our self-worth. If we don’t have a strong sense of our own value as a human being, it’s hard to respect someone else’s.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
In Tennessee, I spent a difficult, joyful week with strangers who became friends. None were journalists. All sought relief from suffering. Guided by Experience Onsite’s trauma-informed therapists, we did movement work to reconnect mind with body. (Ever notice you carry mental stress in your shoulders?) We danced, stretched, played games. We reenacted hard experiences and directed new endings. And we identified the beliefs that prevented us from feeling worthy of basic human needs — safety and belonging.
It went something like this: Identify a time you felt unprotected. Identify the emotions this evoked. Identify the limiting belief that grew from those emotions — a “lie” masked as the truth. Identify the actual truth.
To do this effectively without causing more harm, it’s important to feel safe and know you can take breaks.
Because I trusted my group, I was able to reflect on being swarmed at the Capitol by members of the mob who considered me — the media — their enemy. Adrenaline and cortisol surged to help me run and fight, but I kept still to avoid provoking violence. Other rioters and press watched but did not intervene. I had to figure my way out. I recalled that I had experienced this helpless terror before, decades earlier in the hands of my unstable, violent single mom. As a kid, I was trapped with an unsafe woman I depended on to stay alive.
New psychological injuries from the insurrection, exacerbated by HR’s response to the aftermath, reopened old wounds. To address both, I focused on the earlier events for the “lies” exercise.
The circumstance: my mom’s violence and unpredictability. The emotions: persecuted, abandoned, ashamed. The belief: I must be crazy because my mom can’t be; I’ve done something wrong and deserve punishment; I don’t deserve care. The lie: I cannot trust people; I must be perfect to be safe, to be respected, to be loved. The truth: I am not crazy; I can ask for help; I deserve safety and care in my imperfect state.
We’re the problem and solution
My story is different from yours. Trump’s is different, too. But imagine if he’d done these exercises, with a compassionate guide, before getting lost in the lies? Imagine if our grandparents did. Imagine if today’s society — the one you and I are building — prevented and healed systemic harm so people weren’t perpetually traumatized by bigotry, inequality and guns. Imagine if we could acknowledge, without shame, that we’re both part of the problem and the solution.
I finally acknowledged this in 2021, when I realized I’d grown up to be a perfectionist workaholic. I believed expertly performing under pressure would keep me safe. My profession reinforced and rewarded this childhood story but it came with a cost: health and self-worth. I had let my job define my value, the way some Jan. 6 rioters let Trump define theirs.
Three years have passed since I cast the lies that no longer serve me into a bonfire. Do I still believe them? Sometimes. Do I scan for MAGA hats and startle at unexpected noises? Often. Am I in the newsroom I had let define my worth? No. This year, I finally outgrew being addicted to a culture that made me sick.
This work takes time and empathy. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had the freedom, safety and support to heal into our true selves? This is a privilege that should be a right. What a wild thing to say. Almost unhinged.
Hi, I’m Kate!
I’m a journalist and filmmaker formerly with The Washington Post, where I won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with colleagues covering the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. I also pioneered a mental health column and managed a short documentary film unit. Deeply affected by the insurrection, I realized I was addicted to a job that made me sick. In 2024, I left The Post and founded Invisible Threads to embark on an ongoing exploration of the connections between the health of our minds and our body politic. With a mission to nourish individual and collective wellbeing through a more informed, compassionate public, Invisible Threads pursues its journalistic and educational goals through film, speaking, teaching and this Substack, which features new columns, expert interviews and resources on mental health and democracy every two weeks.
What you need to know…
First, if you or someone you know needs help, 988lifeline.org has resources to support you and help others, as well as a chat service to talk with crisis counselors 24/7. You can also call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. Current or former military service members can call 988 and press 1.
Second, healing work requires play, laughter, a release to temper the hard stuff. I watched Golden Girls and PEN15 and made inappropriate jokes with my sister and best friends. (Okay, I still do.)
Third, everyone should have access to sick leave and mental health care like I did. Follow Inseparable to support grassroots efforts to improve mental health policies where you are.
What I need to know…
I’m figuring out my publishing rhythm. Do you like hearing from me just once a month or want more? Q&A’s are coming. I won’t always write long. Phew. Are you bailing to watch cat videos? (Send your fave.)
Also, if you appreciate what’s here, would you send Invisible Threads to one other person or share on social? Raising this baby will take a village.
What bowled me over…
Author and educator myisha t. hill reading chapter 3, pg. 67 of her book, Heal Your Way Forward. It’s a low production Instagram Live about radical listening that she filmed resting against a bookcase in her local library. myisha has taught me that change work doesn’t have to be big or perfect or fast. In fact, she says, slow is better than burning it all down so we don’t “rebuild the same thing guised as something else.” myisha is the creator of Check Your Privilege, a global community helping people dismantle their relationship with power, privilege and oppression from a mental health perspective. You can get Heal Your Way Forward from her publisher, Row House.
What I’d invite you to explore…
Psychologist Dr. Albert Wong’s take on Why You Can't Think Your Way Out of Trauma
A Better Way to Cover Elections: Campaign Reporting that Centers Communities and Solutions — A free, four-week course by the Knight Center for journalists and “anyone who is dissatisfied with traditional coverage of politics, elections and democracy.”
From the Good News Network: Broadcasting Audio of Healthy Reef Sounds Can Spur Degraded Coral to New Life
Making ‘Marian’ — I recently served as a judge for the White House News Photographers Association’s Eyes of History contest, and this submission by Washington Post video journalist Hadley Green gave me so much hope:
Kate, I am enjoying your stories. We are all made up of the same matter but our threads are uniquely woven fabrics. Everyone experiences trauma at some time in life, however, our reactions may differ. I watched your encounter on Jan 6 and felt your emotions that day. I did not realize the after effects that you have endured. There is far too much suffering going on in our world and unfortunately we are lacking in mental health services. “Invisible Threads” is a great avenue for getting the message out to the streets. Keep doing what you are doing. I am so glad you have found your path to healing and now you are able to help others as well.
If you have a therapist or other mental health support - bring this article with you - it could open doors you might not have known were closed. If you haven’t yet explored your own trauma and mental health - Kate has with grace, courage and compassion shown us that trauma impacts us all. I recommend sharing this gift far and wide.