How the Last Five Years Have Affected Us

"Alongside (and since) the pandemic, we've experienced something else: prolonged cultural distress. In the United States, we've been living through some of the most divisive political tensions that our nation has experienced in decades. Many of us scroll daily through news of political and military actions at home and abroad, climate catastrophes, social fractures, and economic uncertainty. Even if the events do not happen directly to us, they register in our bodies."

"Complex trauma refers to distress that is chronic, unpredictable, and inescapable. Traditionally, psychologists use the term to describe children growing up with abuse or chaos in the home-situations where the nervous system can never fully rest, and from which children cannot escape. On a collective level, that framework has touched us over the last several years."

The COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged cultural conflicts generated both personal and collective psychological crises and left lasting emotional stress. People experienced chronic, unpredictable, and inescapable distress comparable to complex trauma normally described in children exposed to abuse or chaos. Daily exposure to political, military, climate, social, and economic crises registered in bodies and led individuals to absorb distress rather than merely observe it. Young people faced isolation and prolonged screen exposure during vulnerable developmental periods. There was no clean endpoint to these stressors, and many people experienced a cumulative psychological weight that undermined focus and sense of self.

Read at Psychology Today