The Language of Trauma, Part 4: Cultural Trauma
Cultural trauma refers to the deep and lasting wounds inflicted on entire communities through collective experiences of violence, oppression, and dehumanization. Unlike individual trauma, cultural trauma is shared across communities and generations. It is rooted in histories of colonization, racism, forced migration, and systemic violence. It is carried in stories, silences, and bodies. Healing from it involves reclaiming voice, memory and dignity.
“It is not enough to denounce injustice; it is necessary to awaken in the oppressed a consciousness of their own situation as historical beings, capable of transforming their reality”
Liberation psychology urges us to understand trauma not as isolated pathology but as a response to social suffering. Healing requires both personal integration and collective liberation.
What Is Cultural Trauma?
Cultural trauma occurs when a community undergoes a devastating event (or series of events) that shatter its sense of identity, safety, and dignity. These may include:
Colonization and genocide
Slavery and racial terror
Forced migration and war
Systemic racism and cultural erasure
These traumas become part of a collective memory. It is an inheritance often carried in the nervous system, behavior, beliefs, and family dynamics. It impacts how people see themselves, their community, and the world. We’ll examine this inherited aspect more fully in Part Six of this blog series as we look at intergenerational trauma.
Contemporary Examples of Cultural Trauma
Though some sources of trauma are historical, others are ongoing and unfolding in real time. Read on to gain context around two current examples that may be impacting you.
ICE Raids and U.S. Immigration Policy
KTLA Breaking News coverage, June 6, 2025.
Los Angeles has one of the nation's largest immigrant communities. In early June 2025, our city was shaken by an aggressive surge of ICE raids in the Fashion District, swap meets, and Home Depot parking lots. Over a hundred individuals have been detained. Many were taken without warning, leaving families in financial distress and emotional turmoil.
These actions sent shockwaves through immigrant neighborhoods, prompting people to stay home, skip school pickups, and avoid routine errands out of fear. The specter of separation and deportation takes a psychological toll. Yet amidst this fear, the city has also witnessed powerful displays of solidarity.
The Emotionally-Focused Therapy Center of Los Angeles (EFTCLA) has provided this helpful list of resources for members of our immigrant communities.
The Public Response: Protests, Military Presence, and Political Fallout
Starting June 6, tens of thousands gathered—particularly downtown—for largely peaceful "No Kings" protests opposing these immigration raids. While most remained peaceful, there were also confrontations involving tear gas, flash bangs, and a few violent incidents.
The federal government responded with force—deploying 700 Marines and federalizing 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, despite objections from Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom, who are suing to challenge this action.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, has vowed to sustain and expand operations across sanctuary cities, including continued raids in L.A.
Compassionate Reflection: How This Impacts Families
For many in Los Angeles, these raids felt more like occupation than law enforcement. Parents have been torn from children’s lives without warning. Routine errands have turned into perilous acts. The stress and uncertainty sparked by these raids intensify pre-existing migratory trauma. This cultural traumas are generating anxiety, distrust, sleep disruption, and developmental challenges in children.
2. Gaza and Israel
The genocide in Gaza continues to inflict mass trauma on both Palestinians and Israelis. In Gaza, relentless airstrikes, displacement, siege conditions, and the destruction of homes and hospitals leave entire communities in prolonged states of grief and survival. Intergenerational trauma runs deep, especially for children growing up with no experience of safety.
In Israel, ongoing violence, rocket attacks, and the threat of terrorism also contribute to a collective sense of hypervigilance and loss. The political complexities cannot be ignored. Neither can the psychological toll on civilians.
Trauma is compounded when there is no access to justice, mourning, or protection.
Signs of Cultural Trauma
Some common signs of cultural trauma include:
Collective silence around historical pain
Internalized oppression, such as shame around one’s culture, language, or skin color
Hypervigilance or chronic anxiety around authority or institutions
Disconnection from ancestral roots, spirituality, and tradition
Community grief that feels unnamed, suppressed, or unprocessed
Intergenerational mistrust, especially around systems of power
These are not signs of weakness. They are survival responses to real harm.
Liberation Through Awareness and Action
Healing from cultural trauma involves what Martín-Baró called conscientización. He defines this as a conscious awareness of how systemic forces shape our personal suffering. Naming the truth is a first step toward liberation.
Peaceful demonstrations, mutual aid networks, healing justice movements, reparations advocacy, and cultural revitalization are not only political acts. They are therapeutic. They create spaces for mourning, solidarity, and renewal.
Five Reflection Questions Regarding Cultural Trauma
Whether you’ve been directly impacted by cultural trauma or seek to stand in solidarity, consider the following:
What stories were told (or untold) about your people’s struggles and resilience?
In what ways has colonization, racism, or displacement touched your family line?
How do global conflicts or immigration policies affect you emotionally?
What parts of your culture were lost or silenced—and which ones still live in you?
What would reparations look like for your community? What does restoration mean?
Healing Modalities for Cultural Trauma
Story circles, community organizing, vigils, and cultural rituals provide space for collective expression and re-connection.
Trauma therapists trained in liberation psychology, decolonizing practices, or culturally grounded approaches can support identity reclamation and trauma integration.
Breathwork, movement, and nervous system regulation can help release trauma stored in the body. At Rezak Therapy we specialize in somatic therapy to release trauma.
Art, poetry, and music give shape to pain and memory, offering pathways toward dignity and visibility. This is one of the reasons we love The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. Check out our workshops for releasing trauma and unblocking what holds us back through creative living.
Advocacy for immigration reform, reparations, ceasefires, and anti-racist policies can be a deeply healing form of action. Participating in peaceful protests, like the No Kings Day gatherings yesterday, remind us how we can collectively nurture and heal.
Additional Resources
A relevant new film, The Eternal Song, was released last week by Science and Non-Duality (SAND). It is a poignant documentary about the enduring wounds of colonialism. It considers the impact on both the land and on Indigenous and oppressed peoples across the globe. Through poetic imagery and testimony, the film bears witness to the suffering caused by displacement, occupation, and the erasure of cultural identity. Incorporating voices from various frontline communities, The Eternal Song speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the sacredness of memory. It invites viewers into a space where grief, beauty, and resistance co-exist.
The work of Dr. Gabor Maté offers a vital lens through which to understand the cultural trauma explored in the film. His teachings emphasize how systemic oppression and colonization become embedded in the body and psyche. He is particularly concerned with how they manifest as illness, disconnection, and despair. Rather than pathologizing individuals, Maté draws attention to the social roots of suffering. He speaks of the need for compassionate, context-aware healing. His integration of somatic awareness, attunement, and truth-telling echoes the film’s message. Healing is possible not through forgetting, but through remembering deeply, and reclaiming what was never meant to be lost.
Book Suggestions about Cultural Trauma
Writings for a Liberation Psychology – Ignacio Martín-Baró
My Grandmother’s Hands – Resmaa Menakem
This Land Is Their Land – David J. Silverman (on Native resistance to colonization)
Closing Words On Cultural Trauma
Cultural trauma is real. So is cultural resilience. Communities around the world carry the scars of colonization, slavery, forced migration, war, and erasure. They also carry stories of survival, resistance, and renewal. Cultural trauma lives in the nervous systems of individuals, in the silences of families, and in the grief of lands that remember. Yet cultural resilience lives alongside it. Ancestral songs are still sung. Languages are being revitalized. Ceremonies are passed down in secret. Cultural trauma healing is found in protest art, in diasporic kitchens, in the rhythms of survival encoded into community. While trauma fractures identity, resilience gathers the pieces and reweaves them into something fiercely whole. Healing doesn’t mean going back to what was before. It means remembering who we are beneath the rupture, and reclaiming our right to exist with dignity, belonging, and voice. Cultural resilience is not just endurance—it is creative, sacred, and alive.
We carry the grief of our ancestors—but we also carry their songs, their visions, and their resistance. Healing is not about erasing history. It’s about facing it with courage, tending to what hurts, and daring to dream what’s possible.
“The goal of healing must not only be to lessen the suffering of the people, but to transform the very structures that cause that suffering.”
Healing is justice. Healing is memory. Healing is revolution. Healing begins with awareness and unfolds through compassionate relationship with yourself and others.
At Rezak Therapy in Pasadena, California, our trauma therapists approach our work through a cultural lens. We would love to chat with you to assess fit for our trauma therapy services. Please check out our approaches for healing trauma and reach out if you'd like to schedule a free consultation call.
