"When Childhood Wounds Write the Laws"
This paper originated back in 2006, at Pacifica Graduate Institute, for a class in collective trauma, and on how to identify collective trauma in families, communities, institutions and national policy. I’ve revamped it to be more user friendly, less academic, and more attuned to my current work with somatic trauma release and active imagination.
Photo from Stock Photos
No attribution to Artist
"For decades we handled cruelty like a dirty secret. When a father thundered insults across the dinner table or a mother’s sarcasm left a child in tears, relatives murmured “that’s just the way it is,” neighbors decided it was none of their business, and doctors labeled it a private matter. By treating toxic parenting as a household quirk instead of a health issue, we forced every family to improvise its own survival plan. Some children shrank themselves silent, some learned to hit back harder, and most carried the same unhealed wound into adulthood. Those wounds walk with us now into boardrooms, school boards, and ballot boxes, where old reflexes still shape every negotiation.
“What’s wrong with you?” is the seed of that wound, planted the first time it lands in a child’s ear. Picture a seven‑year‑old proudly waving a crayon drawing only to hear, “Why can’t you color inside the lines?” or a teenager who flinches when a parent sighs, “You ruin everything.” The words do not stay on the surface; they take root and keep growing. Instead of thinking “I made a mistake,” the child begins to believe “I am a mistake.” You see the adult version everywhere: the employee who rewrites an email ten times to avoid “looking stupid,” the friend who apologizes for getting sick because they feel like an inconvenience, the parent who snaps when a toddler spills milk because any mess feels like proof of failure.
The body keeps score, as physician Gabor Maté warns. A ten‑year‑old who tiptoes to avoid criticism programs the nervous system to scan for danger. Twenty years later that same person may lie awake at three in the morning replaying harmless conversations, heart pounding as if a tiger were in the room. Hypervigilance becomes their default safety plan, even though the original threat disappeared long ago. Cortisol moves in, and survival patterns of fight, flight, freeze, fawn and fib, are daily go-to skills that prune away full expression of joy, hope, creativity. Shame tends to take control, albeit quiet, but just because Shame lives in the shadows, it is still dominant to how we view the world, and how the world views us.
When millions of homes repeat this pattern, shame turns into a social habit. We see it at family dinners where tears earn eye rolls, in classrooms where “stop crying” replaces “what happened,” and in workplaces where the first person to admit confusion risks being labeled weak. Psychologist James Gilligan observed that unhealed shame often flips into domination: “If I feel small, I will make someone else feel smaller.” Carl Jung called this projection the collective shadow, the parts of ourselves we refuse to see and instead attack in others.
That buried pain is no longer contained in living rooms; it is speaking through national policy. A senator ridicules the vulnerable on social media, a governor signs bills that punish difference, corporations strip the land for profit because short‑term dominance feels safer than long‑term care. We had a chance to interrupt this pattern at home through honest conversations, community support, and mental‑health resources, but we chose silence. Today the stage lights are on, the microphones are live, and there is nowhere to look away.
So how do we meet leaders whose private injuries have gone public? First, we draw firm boundaries; unjust laws must be challenged in courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets. Accountability is non‑negotiable. Second, we make space for officials to face their own pain without unleashing it on the rest of us. That might look like bipartisan mental‑health caucuses, truth‑and‑healing commissions, or whistle‑blowers who expose wrongdoing while still naming the humanity of the wrongdoer. It is tough love in civic form.
Healing starts closer to home. Somatic practices that slow the breath and notice a racing pulse teach adults that the alarm in their chest is an outdated smoke detector, not today’s wildfire. Jung’s Active Imagination invites a conversation with the inner child; close your eyes, picture the moment the painful word landed, and ask that younger self what it needs now. Sometimes the answer is as simple as hearing, “You were never the problem.”
Communities can magnify these private shifts. A teacher kneels beside a sobbing student and asks, “What happened?” showing thirty classmates that feelings are welcome. A construction crew begins Monday with a quick stress check, letting coworkers know when to lend a hand. A city budgets for transgender‑affirming clinics, restorative‑justice programs, and regenerative food landscaping crews, telling every nervous system, “You belong, and so does the land beneath your feet.”
Curiosity is the turning key. The next time someone bristles with defensiveness, try asking silently, “What hurt are they protecting?” The question will not excuse harmful behavior, but it can keep us from adding another layer of shame to an already overloaded story. And when that accusing voice rises inside, "What’s wrong with you?” place a hand over your heart and answer, “Nothing is wrong with me. Something painful happened, and I am learning a kinder way.”
written by Brenda Littleton
Tin Flea Publications, 2006/20325
Photo from Stock Photos
No attribution to Artist