01/18/2026
Trauma awareness is not personal feelings in isolation. It is understanding what overwhelms human nervous systems and what helps them stay regulated and connected. The biggest driver of distress in our culture is not individual weakness, but power organized through domination.
We live under systems that reward control, extraction, and hierarchy. When a few people at the top can do whatever they want, everyone else has to live in a state of uncertainty and threat detection. Bodies adapt to that. They become tense, guarded, reactive, or shut down. That is how survival adaptations form.
This is the root cause of virtually all chronic disease, recurrent pain, and so-called mental health conditions, as well as social ills like homelessness, sexualized violence, and poverty.
Trauma is not isolated in private homes. It is embedded in cultures. A culture built around unrestrained power and contempt for limits forces millions of people into hypervigilance, insecurity, and disconnection.
The real problem in our culture is not “too much politics.” It is too much hierarchy and domination, and too little accountability. That drives overload in human systems. When people say they want a break from it, what they usually mean is they want relief from feeling it. But the relief does not come from ignoring the structure that is harming people. It comes from naming it and changing it.
Trauma awareness means tracking how power works on bodies, relationships, and communities. And right now, the dominant model of power is the source of widespread distress.
Image: my painting that shows the oppression of the domination hierarchy and how collective action, mutual aid, and community care reduce the load on everyone.
