RELATIONAL TRAUMA
Taking Care of Ourselves and Each Other After Charlottesville.
You, like me, are probably sad and angry about the events that occurred in Charlottesville and in The White House last week. When collective trauma events shatter our sense of safety, it’s natural for your nervous system to move into activation — anger, grief, overwhelm, or shutdown.
- This week has been a hard week for many of us.
- Especially in the immediate aftermath of painful, traumatic events like Charlottesville.
- Resources for ideas on how to take care of yourself in hard times:
- And it’s sometimes hard to know how we can show up.
- In times like these, it’s important that we take care of ourselves.
- Please understand: I don’t have the answers.
- References
- Frequently Asked Questions
You, like me, are probably sad and angry about the events that occurred in Charlottesville and in The White House last week.
SUMMARY
When collective trauma events shatter our sense of safety, it’s natural for your nervous system to move into activation — anger, grief, overwhelm, or shutdown. This post offers grounded, practical ways to care for yourself and those around you when the world feels profoundly unsafe, without requiring you to abandon your values or your voice.
Definition
Collective Trauma: Trauma that affects an entire community or group, disrupting the shared sense of safety, trust, and belonging. It can activate individual nervous systems just as personal trauma does, particularly for those with prior relational or childhood trauma histories.
Sad and angry not only from the gathering of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the hateful rhetoric they spew and represent but in the pitiful lack of leadership of condemnation of these events from the highest office in the land.
This week has been a hard week for many of us.
SELF-CARE
Self-care is the intentional practice of attending to one’s own physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs as an essential foundation for well-being. True self-care goes far beyond surface-level indulgences; it includes setting boundaries, processing emotions, maintaining meaningful connections, and building a life that does not constantly require recovery from itself.
It’s been a hard week because it’s a reminder of so many things.
A reminder that the ancient wound of racism, supremacy, and violence (in thought and in action) is wide open. And still festering in this country.
A reminder that our current President does not stand (nor take a stand) firmly rooted in esteemable morals and good judgment.
A reminder that even our family, friend, and acquaintance groups may be divided in themselves about how (if at all) to respond or react to this.
This week has been a reminder of so much personal and collective pain, a reminder of so many deeply entrenched, destructive systemic issues that seem to have no solution.
You may be feeling overwhelmed and wanting to withdraw from social media, the news, even from folks in your life. This is okay…
You may be feeling righteous anger and planning to show up at counter protests or peaceful demonstrations. This is okay…
You may be feeling compelled to act in social media conversations, to post, to write, to do something to show your stance and to influence the opinions of those around you. This is okay…
You may not know how you feel or even how or if you want to respond to anything that’s happening right now. This is okay…
What I want to say to you right now is this: We all have different responses to stress. And there is no right or wrong way about how to respond or how to take care of yourself.
Especially in the immediate aftermath of painful, traumatic events like Charlottesville.
TAKE THE QUIZ
What’s driving your relational patterns?
A 3-minute assessment to identify the core wound beneath your relationship struggles.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
RUMI
There is no one right way to respond. Our individual trauma histories, our varying emotional capacities, our widely diverse logistical time and physical capabilities dictate how much and in what way we can tolerate showing up for or even metabolizing stressors like what happened this week.
So please, if you’re feeling a pressure to act or respond or be a certain way, remember to check in with yourself and see what your capacity and what your boundaries are around this.
Only you can know what’s good and right and true for you right now whether this is tuning into the news, tuning out to the news, having conversations about what’s happening in America, being on or off social media, or withdrawing and tending to your heart and soul and your small corner of the world.
To that end, because self-care is critical for us in times like these, I wanted to provide a round-up of self-care articles and resources (some of them mine from the archives, some of them from others) that you can explore for ideas about how to take care of yourself right now.
Resources for ideas on how to take care of yourself in hard times:
A Reason to Keep Going
25 pages of what I actually say to clients when they are in the dark. Somatic tools, cognitive anchors, and 40 grounded, honest reasons to stay. No platitudes.
- How racism impacts our mental health: a podcast episode by Dr. Joy Harden Bradford of Therapy for Black Girls
- 101 Self-Care Suggestions When It All Feels Like Too Much.
- 4 Self-Care Tips for People of Color After Charlottesville
- 5 Self-Care Practices Black People Can Use While Coping With Trauma
- 11 small ways to feel less helpless this week, from a trained therapist.
- Feeling hopeless? A therapist explains why you might be grieving the state of our world.
- The ABC’s Of Self-Care & Sustainable Engagement Over The Next Four Years.
- 7 small things you can do right now to feel better after the 2016 election results.
And, with this being said, I think that, for many of us, along with a need for self-care there’s a dual compulsion to want to do something, anything, to help, to fix, to address the grievous wound that has been opened. And that’s a beautiful impulse. I join you in that.
And it’s sometimes hard to know how we can show up.
To know what actions will make a difference, and where we should spend our limited time and energy. Or, quite frankly, what even we’re capable of doing right now.
So, in addition to a list of self-care articles, I also wanted to provide you with a list of actionable resources and articles that can help you assess and determine how you might like to do something and contribute and play a part in mending and healing what you can:
- 10 Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide From the Southern Poverty Law Center
- Charlottesville: How to Help
- 9 Actions For Millennials To Take After Charlottesville
- Brené Brown’s Facebook Live video on why we need to keep talking about Charlottesville.
- “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D.
- Here’s what you can do to take action after Charlottesville — and beyond
- Feeling hopeless after Charlottesville? 16 ways you can make a big difference.
- 12 things white people can do now because Ferguson (an old article which, sadly-ironically, popped up on my Facebook memory timeline this morning as I was writing this post)
In times like these, it’s important that we take care of ourselves.
And that we take care of each other in whatever ways seem possible for each of us.
I’ve heard from a lot of people this week about their heightened anxiety levels. Being retriggered because of their own histories of oppression and personal experience with family abuse. Or feeling confused about how to own and look at their privilege. And use it in a way that actually helps.
Please know that all of this is normal and natural. Anxiety, overwhelm, anger, sadness, disappointment, and fear. These are all normal and natural and appropriate responses to what’s happening in our country right now.
We are living in very challenging times plainly seeing and feeling painful, social systemic wounds that, perhaps, many of us with privilege haven’t had to confront or live with so acutely yet.
Please understand: I don’t have the answers.
Instead, I join you in the question of how to best help in the small ways I can, including continuing to own and understand my own White Privilege, taking personal action to eradicate racial injustice, and to do this as I labor in my daily life and tend to my corner of the world in Berkeley, California.
This post is less an article than it is a letter from me to you. Wanting you to know that I’m in it with you. That I’m thinking of you, that I have a couple of resources that might feel helpful for you.
But most of all to let you know that we’re all in this together. I’ll keep trying to do what I can to be of support to you as these weeks, months, and years unfold.
And so, I wonder, how are you doing? How’s your heart been in this past week? What and who has been supporting you in moving through your feelings about Charlottesville?
Leave me a message in the comments below. I’d love to know how you’re doing in your corner of the world.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
|
Free Quiz What’s Running Your Life?The invisible patterns you can’t outwork… |
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. This quiz reveals the childhood patterns keeping you running — and why enough is never enough. |
Frequently Asked Questions
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.
References
- Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning. Frontiers in Psychology.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton.
- McEwen, B. S., & Gianaros, P. J. (2010). Central role of the brain in stress and adaptation: Links to socioeconomic status, health, and disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
- van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books.
- Williams, D. R., & Mohammed, S. A. (2013). Racism and Health I: Pathways and Scientific Evidence. American Behavioral Scientist.
- DiAngelo, R. (2018). White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press.
- Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford University Press.
- Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K. (2013). A Pilot Study and Randomized Controlled Trial of the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. Journal of Clinical Psychology.
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT® Skills Training Manual, Second Edition. Guilford Press.
Perfectionism is a belief system that equates your worth with your performance and demands flawless outcomes. In daily life, it can show up as procrastination (avoiding starting because you might not do it perfectly), excessive self-criticism, difficulty delegating, spending disproportionate time on tasks, and never feeling satisfied with your accomplishments.
While perfectionism can drive achievement, it comes at a significant cost. Adaptive perfectionism involves high standards with flexibility and self-compassion. Maladaptive perfectionism involves rigid, fear-based standards that lead to anxiety, burnout, and never feeling good enough. The goal is to maintain high standards while developing a healthier relationship with imperfection.
Perfectionism is often rooted in a deep fear of failure, judgment, or not being ‘enough.’ If you believe that your worth depends on your performance, then any mistake feels catastrophic. This fear can be traced back to early experiences where love or approval felt conditional on achievement, creating a template where perfection equals safety.
Strategies include challenging the all-or-nothing thinking that underlies perfectionism, practicing ‘good enough’ in low-stakes situations, celebrating effort and progress rather than just outcomes, and developing self-compassion for mistakes. Gradually exposing yourself to imperfection and noticing that the feared consequences don’t materialize can also help.
Therapy can help by exploring the roots of your perfectionism, often in early relational experiences, and developing a more compassionate relationship with yourself. Cognitive-behavioral approaches can help challenge the underlying beliefs, while relational therapy can provide a corrective experience of being valued for who you are, not just what you do.
Further Reading on Relational Trauma
Explore Annie’s clinical writing on relational trauma recovery.
WAYS TO WORK WITH ANNIE
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
Trauma-informed therapy for driven women healing relational trauma.
Licensed in California and Florida. Work one-on-one with Annie to repair the psychological foundations beneath your impressive life.
Trauma-informed coaching for ambitious women navigating leadership and burnout.
For driven women whose professional success has outpaced their internal foundation. Coaching that goes beyond strategy.
Annie’s signature course for relational trauma recovery.
A structured, self-paced program for women ready to do the deeper work of healing the patterns beneath their success.
STRONG & STABLE
The Sunday conversation you wished you’d had years earlier.
Weekly essays, practice guides, and workbooks for driven women whose lives look great on paper — and feel heavy behind the scenes. Free to start. 20,000+ subscribers.
Annie Wright
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
What would it mean to finally have the right support?
A complimentary consultation to discuss what you are navigating and whether working together makes sense.
BOOK A COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATIONAnnie Wright
LMFT · 15,000+ Clinical Hours · W.W. Norton Author · Psychology Today ColumnistAnnie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist, relational trauma specialist, and the founder and successfully exited CEO of a large California trauma-informed therapy center. A W.W. Norton published author, she writes the weekly Substack Strong & Stable and her work and expert opinions have appeared in NPR, NBC, Forbes, Business Insider, The Boston Globe, and The Information.
MORE ABOUT ANNIE
