Your Pain Isn't a Personal Failure: It's a symptom of a broken system
What I learned recovering from Complex Trauma
The Boudiccan destruction horizon is geological evidence of one of my heroes: Boudicca, the first century Celtic Queen who waged war on the Romans after they defiled her daughters and flogged Boudicca herself in public.
I have two daughters. When I was assaulted at work—and then forced to continue working under the man who did it—I wanted to burn the whole place down. Instead, I got a diagnosis: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. C-PTSD.
I did the rehab, and then became a trauma-informed coach, driven to help people navigate the very challenges I had faced. I wanted to help them keep working, if they chose to, while healing. But as I worked with more and more people, a pattern emerged. They all echoed the same profound sense of “something just isn’t working,” regardless of how obediently they had followed the professed rules of the game.
They were disillusioned but hopeful, just as I had been. As they progressed in their careers, they either witnessed, were asked to participate in, or were on the receiving end of unethical behavior in the name of profit—all while social inequality grew around them.
It’s all in your head
It is confusing as a worker, at the least, when the profits we help make are used against our communities rather than to support and enrich them. How did we get to the point that the people in pain were the ones who were diagnosed with the problem?
My search for an answer began with Judith Herman’s landmark 1992 book, Trauma and Recovery where I learned something about Freud that began a cognitive shift, permanently altering my perspective on healing, wellness, and power.
The Domination of Women
As part of the rise of the anti-clerical movement in France in the late 19th century, more investigation into hysteria was undertaken. Not to alleviate the suffering of women, but to show that science could triumph where religion had failed.
Herman revealed that Freud, in his early work on “hysteria,” discovered a simple, powerful truth. When his female patients could speak about their experiences of abuse and have those experiences validated, their symptoms began to alleviate. Anna O., one of the most prominent patients, called it the “talking cure”. Freud developed his theory of psycho-analysis as he interviewed these women.
But Freud’s research uncovered an endemic pattern of premature, incestuous, and abusive sexual exploitation of women across all social classes. Although “The Aetiology of Hysteria” was published in 1896, within a year, Freud repudiated his own findings.
This truth was not the key to enter the social elite he craved to join; it was a threat to their entire structure. So instead, he repositioned the issue as “Penis Envy”, thus pathologizing victims.
The Allegiance of Men
The allegiance of men to this system was cemented during the World Wars. Soldiers returned from the front with feelings they weren’t supposed to have: sadness, fear, constant anxiety. This “shellshock”, a completely normal human reaction to the horrors of industrial warfare, undermined the propaganda of glorious empire. It proved that men, in fact, do not enjoy killing other people for amorphous goals.
In fact, men’s completely normal reaction to the horrors of war was considered proof of failure, not humanity.
We know this because Yealland, in his 1918 book “Hysterical Disorder of Warfare” based his entire treatment regimen on browbeating the soldiers - for laziness, for cowardice, for failing their fellow soldiers. Electric shock therapy was suggested and used.
By World War Two, loyalty was weaponized. Men experiencing profound mental distress were shamed back to the front lines, told their vulnerable, under-staffed units needed them. Love of their comrades was used as a tool of coercion.
A year after WWII, two American psychiatrists concluded that one cannot “get used to combat” and that after 200-240 days of war, even the most committed person will experience psychiatric casualties but this information did not inform training or treatment of soldiers.
Consciousness Rising
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a growing awareness of the impact of domestic violence on women’s well being combined with burgeoning economic independence. Women began to go to consciousness raising groups to talk about their lives and experiences. These groups created a sense of solidarity as women learned they were not alone in experiencing violence.
Similarly for men, initiated by Vietnam veterans who had been ostracized on their return home, rap groups grew where men could come and share their stories and be witnessed and believed by others, reducing isolation.
These groups are examples of people who have survived things many want to ignore supporting each other in peer-to-peer relationships. Such relationships are empowering because the isolation and self-blame are replaced with purpose as new skills are developed and others are supported in their journey.
Where we are now in understanding trauma
In 2008 Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts changed the conversation around substance use, bringing the idea that addiction is a response to pain—not a personal failure—into the mainstream. Since then, research and publications on the impacts of trauma have become increasingly common.
Yet the system’s tendency to locate trauma within the individual remains. The goal is still to “fix” the person so they can return to being an economically productive member of society. This isn’t a pathway to healing. It is a form of gaslighting, designed to make you believe that your wellness is the same as your economic productivity for someone else.
My Revelation
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for me during a somatic embodiment course with Linda Thai. She shared this simple but powerful progression in understanding healing:
Colonial: What is wrong with you?
Trauma-Informed: What happened to you?
Cultural safety: What happened to your people?
Liberation: What happened and continues to happen to you and your people?
This was the bridge. I started to think about what it meant for me having had a childhood I needed to heal from, and how I probably wasn’t the only one. So what was it that was creating so much harm in our lives? If creating harm and separation was our normal state, how did we ever leave the caves?
As a sociologist trained to recognize social patterns, I realized the endless, discreet diagnoses given to individuals were too similar to be a coincidence. They were not individual failings; they were symptoms of a systemic wound at a cultural level.
This is the pattern I named Colonial Dislocation Trauma, and its end stage, Colonial Dislocation Psychosis.
I invite you to join this exploration. If this piece sparked something in you, I would be honored to hear about it in the comments.
This series is the beginning of a necessary conversation, and it starts with my own story. For the next week, I will be publishing a multi-part series to introduce a new framework for understanding the systemic trauma that poisons our work and our world. It’s called Colonial Dislocation Trauma.