The Great Trauma Myth: Were We Ever Whole to Begin With?
The Great Trauma Myth
Trauma studies has convinced us that healing means returning to a "whole" self—the self that existed before trauma. But what if that self never existed? What if the very idea of wholeness is a myth, a construct designed to manage, contain, and govern us?
If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of trauma healing—like no matter how much therapy you do, no matter how much "self-work" you commit to, you're still somehow not enough—you’re not alone. This feeling isn’t a personal failure. It’s the result of a deeply embedded assumption in Western trauma studies: that trauma breaks us, and that healing means restoring what was.
But what if trauma isn’t a break?
What if it’s a rupture—an opening, a portal—something that destabilizes not just our sense of self, but entire systems of knowledge and power?
This isn’t just about personal healing. It’s about how trauma has been weaponized—captured inside colonial, capitalist, and medical frameworks that don’t allow it to move.
If trauma studies is trapped in this myth, how do we create new ways of thinking about trauma—ways that let it move, breathe, and open new possibilities?
Where Did This Myth Come From?
The idea that trauma is a "break" comes from Western medical and psychological models that have always been about control.
Trauma as a Tool of Governance
For over a century, trauma has been framed as an individual disorder—something that happens inside a person, something that can be diagnosed, categorized, and treated. But this framework has always served a larger purpose: it regulates people, keeps them functioning, and ensures they return to productivity.
Industrial trauma (19th century) → Factory and railway workers were diagnosed with “railway spine” so companies could manage workplace injuries.
War trauma (WWI & WWII) → "Shell shock" and PTSD were studied to get soldiers back into combat as quickly as possible.
Psychiatry and neoliberalism (late 20th century) → PTSD became a medicalized condition, focusing on treating the individual, rather than addressing systemic conditions that cause harm in the first place.
These frameworks have shaped how we understand trauma today. They teach us that trauma is a disruption in a previously stable self, and that the goal of healing is to return to normal.
But if “normal” is built on colonialism, capitalism, and extractive systems that are themselves traumatizing, then what exactly are we returning to?
Why This Myth Keeps Us Stuck
If trauma is defined as a break from wholeness, then all healing must be a return to what was.
This erases transformation.
This traps people in cycles of "not being healed enough."
This makes trauma an industry—because people are never truly "fixed."
This is why PTSD feels like a loop.
Trauma is something that wants to move.
But dominant trauma studies keeps it locked in the same narratives, the same psychological and medical models.
The industry depends on keeping people trapped.
What If Trauma Isn’t a Break, But a Portal?
If trauma isn’t about restoring wholeness, then what is it?
Trauma is an ontological rupture → It destabilizes not just individuals but entire ways of knowing.
Trauma is a portal → It opens up new ways of being, thinking, and relating.
Trauma is relational → It moves through bodies, land, histories, and communities—it is never just individual.
But not all portals lead to transformation.
Some are sealed shut by systems of power.
Some become traps, cycles of suffering that keep people stuck.
Only when trauma is held relationally—outside of medical, colonial frameworks—can it actually move.
How Do We Hold Trauma Differently?
If trauma is not something to be erased, but something that guides us toward transformation, then how do we hold it in ways that allow movement?
Refuse the demand for coherence → Let trauma exist in poetry, sound, movement, and silence. It does not have to be narratable.
Shift trauma beyond the individual → Hold it in relational, land-based, and multispecies ways.
Stop chasing a return to the past → Healing is not about going backward, but about opening pathways into what has not yet been imagined.
An Invitation
What if healing is not about fixing what was lost, but stepping into what is possible?
What if trauma was never meant to be a return to wholeness, but an expansion into the unknown?
What if we stopped asking “how do I get back to normal?” and started asking “what is this rupture showing me?”
What if trauma isn’t a wound, but a portal?
This is an invitation to rethink trauma, to step outside the cycles of pathology and capture, and to imagine something new.
