Trauma-Informed Politics
When you think about what kinds of events might constitute a psychological trauma, what sorts of things come to mind? Broadly speaking, most of us would agree on the major ones — childhood abuse, sexual assault, a catastrophic accident, and witnessing or being victimized by violence. But your freshman psych textbook probably did not list “a presidential election with an unexpected and undesired outcome” as a potential root of trauma — at least, not unless it was published after November of 2016, when it rapidly rose to the top of the list of things many of us had to discuss with our therapists.
We all have a horror story from that night. We all remember the feeling of impotent despair as the electoral college map filled in more red than blue, the sputtering befuddlement of states being “too close to call” that we hadn’t even thought were questionable, our anticipatory optimism crumbling into a rubble of shock, rage, grief, and fear.
Then, we had to try to sleep, to try not to torture ourselves with what ifs, or with wondering how we would explain this to our children.
Then, we had to get up the next day and figure out how to move on with our lives as if our paradigms about our country, our fellow Americans, and our lives hadn’t been apocalyptically turned on their heads the night before.
Then, at several weigh-stations along the path that led to now — inauguration day, Charlottesville, the Mueller Report, all things Putin — reality absconded with our capacity for hope.
For a professional in the field, it took me a surprisingly long time to recognize my own reaction to the election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the land as a normal, healthy, and even stereotypical response to a traumatic event. It had elements of my reactions to other traumas I’d experienced — the denial of my sexual assault, the shock waves of my father’s unexpected death, the feelings of abject hopelessness after a sudden job loss. Personally, professionally, and academically, I’m well-versed in trauma — but characterizing a presidential election as traumatic, even in my head, sounded hyperbolic.
The psyche, of course, doesn’t care about what sounds hyperbolic. It just reacts. Vigorously.
That trauma wasn’t just limited to the left, either. Good faith Trump voters, who were turned off by his racist and sexist rhetoric but believed his presidency might bring them economic prosperity, were traumatized when his administration turned out to be one dominated by racist and sexist rhetoric and economic prosperity limited only to the wealthy. “Reflex-action” Republican voters, who perhaps did not follow politics all that closely but cast their vote for the Republican candidate out of habit, were traumatized by seeing what they had tacitly endorsed. Third party voters, as well as centrist and left-leaning voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton, were traumatized for a similar reason. And all of us, regardless of our position on the political spectrum, compounded each other’s traumas by pointing fingers at one another, saying they were directly and specifically to blame for the brushfire that was unleashed when Donald Trump became the president.
We are a nation in crisis. We are a nation with acute, ongoing trauma.
After the 2016 election, I started to think and read more about trauma-informed care. I’ve worked in healthcare for fifteen years, and TIC has been the bedrock on which I’ve built my relationships with patients. It’s an increasingly talked-about methodology for working with any population of people with known, suspected, or possible trauma in their backgrounds — which is to say everyone.
To drastically oversimplify the concept, TIC is an approach that recognizes the prevalence of trauma in the lives of the people we encounter and incorporates an understanding of their potential coping mechanisms into our own interactions with them. TIC can be as straightforward as warning someone before you make contact with their body or as innovative as collaboratively determining what positions for a medical exam might minimize psychological triggers. It’s a practice that demands the cultivation of trust and an equalizing of the power dynamics that are inherent to the relationship between healthcare provider and patient.
Thus far, trauma-informed care modalities are only really discussed in healthcare and social service fields — but these are principles that transcend disciplines. And in our current sociopolitical climate, in which so many of us are traumatized and re-traumatized every day from the White House, we are begging for everyone to practice trauma-informed care — not just our doctors, therapists, and social workers, but our partners, friends, and coworkers. And, critically, our elected leaders.
We are a traumatized nation. And we need a leader who practices trauma-informed care in dealing with us.
As I write this, twenty-one candidates for the Democratic nomination remain in contention. I have a great deal of admiration for most of them and would enthusiastically support them on the ticket. But in my assessment, there’s only one candidate that is fluent in the language of trauma-informed politics, and that’s Pete Buttigieg.
The reasons for my support of Mayor Pete are many and varied, from his unparalleled eloquence to his grace under fire to his aggressive authenticity; but it is his innate understanding of how to address, unify, and mobilize a nation traumatized by a bully-in-chief that hits me in a place I didn’t even fully realize still needed healing. I have no idea what, if any, familiarity this candidate has with TIC as a concept, but I damn sure know its practice when I see and hear it.
There are five widely-recognized pillars of TIC in a healthcare and social services setting: safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness, and empowerment. In my assessment as a practitioner of TIC, Pete embraces them all. Let’s go down the list, shall we?
Safety. Pete is unfailingly calm. His husband has said that he’s never heard Pete raise his voice, even in anger. His passion resonates without having to shout. Raised voices and angry dialogue can and often do compound trauma, especially when our current Commander in Chief is more of a Bully in Chief, using his position to cut others down at maximum volume at every chance he gets. Pete actively listens, makes eye contact, and makes it clear with subtle but intentional body language that his attention on the person speaking to him is absolute. Anyone who’s been bullied will tell you: that intention, that eye contact, makes one feel valued, and in turn, makes one feel safer and freer. In terms of policy, Pete understands that security and military action are not synonymous; that in order to feel and be truly safe, one must not only be protected from foreign threats but from domestic terrorists with guns, economic insecurity, and voter suppression tactics. Pete sees the big picture on safety; Pete also sees millions of smaller pictures on safety.
Choice. Pete understands — frankly, better than any other white man I’ve ever seen speak on the subject — that systems of oppression and privilege all spring from a common root system, that you cannot cut off one head of the hydra and call it a job well done. Pete understands that racial justice is environmental justice is reproductive justice is voting justice is economic justice is labor justice, and he interconnects his platforms and policies accordingly, using them as building blocks to provide access to freer choices for all Americans. Pete trusts us to determine what is best for ourselves an our lives, whether we’re deciding what kind of healthcare plan we want, for whom we should cast a ballot, or whether or not we should stay pregnant.
Collaboration. Pete makes it a point to surround himself with a team of people who are broadly unlike himself. He actively seeks out occasions to understand more fully where he as an individual — and thus his campaign — have blind spots and how those blind spots can be rectified. He takes good-faith criticism to heart and uses it to fuel tangible change in how he governs and how he campaigns. He understands how to use his privilege — white, male, able-bodied, cis, economically prosperous — to elevate the voices of people who lack his privileges, and then to yield the floor to them.
Trustworthiness. Trust demands honesty, transparency, and a willingness to change. Pete is honest, even when the truth isn’t what we want to hear. At a moment in our country’s history where most of us are screaming for things to be “normal again,” Pete is honest when he tells us there’s no going “back to normal” after the Trump administration — but he does not permit us to fall into despair, telling us instead how we can be a phoenix from the ashes. Pete is transparent not only about his goals but about the values that drive them. When he stumbles, he owns up to it promptly, accepts constructive criticism with grace, and changes course when he needs to.
Empowerment. In the reproductive justice movement, one of our common refrains is, “Choice without access is not choice.” Pete gets that, and in every aspect of his campaign, Pete has sought to improve access to tools of self-empowerment, from his extraordinary Douglass Plan to improve the lives of black Americans to his rural development plan that seeks to give rural Americans equal access to opportunities that might otherwise be out of reach for them to a remarkably comprehensive plan to combat opioid dependence and improve access to high-quality mental healthcare. Pete understands that empowerment and freedom go hand in hand. He can trace the stepping stones from access to choices to empowerment to justice to freedom, and he seeks to put those tools in our hands while using his own power to level the playing field so we can better use those tools.
When I first heard Pete Buttigieg speak, I had the same thought that virtually everyone has when they first hear him speak — who the hell is this? what the hell is that last name? did he just use the word “ingratiate” correctly in a sentence? And then he spoke of values and justice, of practical steps we can take to make the lives of all Americans better, and I was captivated. I saw something blurry, indistinct, and glittering in the distance, somehow only real in its blurriness but glittering all the same. I couldn’t identify it at first, but as Pete spoke, he gave it shape, contours, shadow, and definition, and walked me down the path so I could give it a name.
It was hope.
I lost the muscle memory for hope when the Trump administration began. We all did, in one way or another. And now, an unassuming midwestern mayor is leading the charge for reminding us all what hope looks and sounds and feels like.
I say we give him the chance to keep reminding us.
