Trauma can be hell on earth; transformed, it is a divine gift.
—Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger
Somatic Experiencing is a specific treatment for healing the wounds of trauma; it was developed by the psychologist Peter Levine. I suspect that Levine would agree with me that industrial civilization is inherently traumatizing. In fact, I have never met anyone who grew up in this culture who has not been traumatized in some fashion. Anyone living with trauma understands clearly what a hell it can be. Millions more, who do not understand the ways in which they are living with trauma, are also living out various versions of hell at miscellaneous times in their lives.
Trauma saps our life-force energy and compels us to utilize it in ways that work against us and those we care about. It is debilitating, destructive, and often deadly. In turbulent times, we will unarguably witness an increase in levels of trauma and people acting it out on themselves and others. In some parts of the collapsing world, the severity of trauma will intensify dramatically. We cannot predict when, where, or how this will happen. What we can do is engage in trauma-healing programs, not only to learn how to deal with traumatized people around us, but also to learn how to navigate our own trauma, which will almost certainly be exacerbated in a chaotic world. Somatic Experiencing provides excellent training for trauma healing, as do a number of other techniques.
When we consciously address our trauma—or any wound sustained in the course of our human journey—and when we persevere in the healing process, we invariably discover that, regardless of the final outcome, our transformed wounds become divine gifts that make us wiser, more resilient, and more whole. In fact, wholeness begins with being broken apart. Residing deep in wound is a gift—or many gifts—which cannot be accessed without willingly descending into it.