Tara, my 2.5-year-old daughter, was playing when she came to my wife and told her:
Mommy hear me, please!
She didn't say listen to me, but she said hear me. She said, with a Farsi pronunciation that was odd. I was working and I stopped. My wife and I looked at each other and paid attention to her. It was a new way for her to ask to play with her.
She's not aware of the word she used but replacing "listen" with "hear" caught our attention. The way she talked created a listening capacity for us.
I was reflecting on all the happenings in Iran after more than three weeks and how much stress and anxiety people are experiencing.
I'm not going to talk about the news, but I was thinking about what's going on with us. Where will this rage lead?
The rage grows deeper and deeper even if it does not express itself. It's living in collective memory. It's the result of collective trauma. Today, suffering is manifest in the streets, but no one is listening. The answer just seeds more anger.
A Collective Trauma
People in Iran are talking on social media about high-stress rates, anxiety, and insomnia. I have the same experiences. Feel numb most of the time and it's difficult to focus. Last week I was in a meeting with one of my clients. The CEO was silent most of the time. He was not like always. I asked him how do you feel?
He replied: Can't do anything. I feel a great deal of pressure on me.
The time is tense and chaotic because we are experiencing a collective trauma.
Collective trauma can be understood as a response to a one-time event, or as a response to a long-term event. The first type of collective trauma can occur when a “cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society” happens, such as a natural or human-caused disaster.1
Victims vs Perpetrators
If humans around the globe ask themselves why we need to change the way of life, and economic and governance models, besides global warming and inequality, one of the answers would be polarization.
Human-caused collective trauma is the result of polarization where groups confront together. In such situations, there's a victim group and there's a perpetrator group.
Dividing a nation into right and wrong, and us and them will lead to a clash of values. Groups starting the enemyfying game as Adam Kahane describes in his book "Collaborating with Enemy" as enemyfying syndrome:
“The enemy-fying equivalent is “I see things differently, you are wrong, she is the enemy.”
Collective trauma in general creates the collective narrative, collective emotions, and collective values. During a time period, all narratives, emotions, and values become part of the collective memory of the group and are handed down to the next generations. We usually hear or see this through music, paintings, and stories from our ancestors. It is also present in the laws and policies.
Victims and perpetrators both face social identity threats and try to cope with trauma in their own ways. The situations are interpreted in an attempt to find meaning. Symbols are made out of events, and the reason for the event becomes the main goal of solidarity.
On the other hand, perpetrators try to deny or deny the darker aspects of the event. They try to save their positive image by manipulating the collective narrative of victims in a way that supports their legitimacy. Power becomes finite for perpetrators, so they decide to start terrifying other groups about their power. In such a scenario, suppressing victims becomes the source of their power. Manipulating narratives, suppressing strategies, and playing the victim game are ways for perpetrators to maintain a positive image. This strategy rarely leads to trust because it is based on fear and denial of reality.2
Is there any chance to heal the collective trauma?
Every collective trauma can be an opportunity for positive change where the community or group feels strong bonds together because they have a shared narrative. Every collective trauma can be like a sacred womb that gives birth to a new purpose or goal for the group. Throughout history, humans have grown from their suffering. The light comes in from the cracks in the bonds.
Collective suffering becomes a collective purpose and it shapes solidarity between people which is a path toward healing. This kind of healing is an inner group strategy but may not help with polarization.
Throughout history, collective trauma caused social changes. But the first step to change is acknowledgment. Acknowledgment means stepping beyond denial and it takes courage. It means owning the responsibility and incorporating the other group's narrative.
It took 150 years for the Congolese to receive the regret and apology from the Belgian king and government. Yes, it took 150 years. Both countries decided to close the doors to history and start a new era.
The story of slavery to the Congolese lingered in their minds for 150 years. It was part of their historic memory.
Recognizing and accepting responsibility for collective trauma is crucial to healing. It's necessary to change the national narrative. It means questioning the status quo. But history shows that it may take years and years to reach that moment.
“…society is responsible, largely, for shaping people, for giving them opportunities for unfolding more freely and more unafraid. But this unfolding is confused and complicated by man’s basic animal fears: by his deep and indelible anxieties about his own impotence and death, and his fear of being overwhelmed and sucked up into the world and into others. All this gives his life quality of drivenness, of underlying desperation, an obsession with the meaning of it and with his own significance as a creature” (Becker, 1975).
The Listening Capacity
Now, social media along with traditional media are creating different narratives of events in the world. Sometimes they are manipulated by governments. Still, patterns of needs can be identified.
Leadership for change can be defined as the capacity to listen to the narratives and make sense of them. Narratives emerge and transform into new narratives. Listening needs capacity because it faces groups with human dark sides. The fear is front and center and no one can deny it.
In every human-caused collective trauma there is a need:
Hear us, please! As my daughter, Tara told me.
https://www.nepsy.com/articles/general/understanding-collective-trauma/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6095989/