This is the first step in working on healing our country, toward mending fractured relationships, to heal ourselves first.

I bet you have been traumatized by something. It might be from your family of origin, from a community that didn’t support you when you needed it or even criticized you for needing support, or even religious trauma. If you’ve had a radical reaction in a situation, then maybe there’s something else going on besides what’s present. When I say radical reaction, I mean leaving a community or relationship rather than confronting the problem.

We have all been hurt, that’s part of the human condition. And when we get hurt, we later hurt each other. But some of us have experienced more trauma and some of us feel that hurt on a more excruciating level than others. If that’s the case, our hurts (our sore spots, or our old tapes) influence how we react when others say or do things.

You might be unaware of your own reactions. I know I was, at first. One way to judge this is whether your reactions are out of proportion to the immediate stimuli. It may be that other people mention it. Listen for clues in what other people say when they give you feedback.

You really can’t start doing this work of mending your fractured relationships until you start healing yourself. You need to uncover the source of the problem before you go any further. Otherwise, you won’t get anywhere. You will just repeat the old behaviors and not be able to try new behavior.

It is possible to heal. I know because I am recovering from trauma myself. No, I wasn’t raped or in a war zone or experienced a huge traumatic event. I don’t actually know exactly what caused it, but I had symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. It isn’t all gone, but the condition is a lot better. There are times I can have these conversations successfully now. There is no way I could have experimented and tried new behaviors before all the help I have gotten and the work I have done.

The tools that I used to overcome trauma are therapy, support groups, spiritual retreats, yoga, and bodywork. I have also tried a new massage technique called myofascial massage that helps to release the trauma that we hold in the tissues of our body. This is one type of a new emerging field of therapy, called somatic therapy.

If you have some symptoms of trauma, it doesn’t matter if you know why you have them. It could even be generational or cultural. But don’t start working on a relationship until you start to heal. You won’t be able to implement these ideas until you do. At least, that was true for me. You need to take care of yourself before you can work on the relationship and work on healing our country.