How the Last Five Years Have Affected Us

More than just a public health catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic generated a psychological crisis that was both personal and collective. With luck, the worst is behind us now, but one thing is already clear: the emotional stress of those years left its mark.

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.

We don’t simply observe distress—we absorb it.

And while our individual experiences differ widely, what we share is the psychological weight of these cumulative stressors. Identifying this shared trauma is important. When we don’t name collective emotional disruption, we tend to blame ourselves as being lost, less focused, and wondering why we are “not ourselves.”

Consider the role of complex trauma in our collective experience—and in your own life, too.

Understanding Complex Trauma

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.

We could not escape the pandemic.

Kids could not go to school.

We could not turn off the news.

We could not exit the cultural conflicts unfolding around us.

Young people were isolated, stuck in front of screens at a vulnerable moment in their lives.

There has been no clean endpoint.

This is not the same as a single traumatic event, after which healing begins. In cases like this, our bodies stay in continued vigilance—waiting for the next piece of bad news, the next change in guidelines or policies, the next social rupture. Even if your rational mind says, “Things are improving,” your nervous system may not yet believe it.

Signs of Collective Complex Trauma

You might recognize this collective complex trauma in yourself through symptoms like:

• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Emotional numbness, or feeling “flat”
• Irritability and shorter-fuse reactions
• Trouble sleeping or feeling rested
• Persistent uncertainty and loss of trust
• Feeling detached from joy, or future planning

This is not a weakness. It's your nervous system doing its best to cope.

How We Begin to Heal

As an experienced psychiatrist, I can offer no easy fix. But pathways to healing exist—especially those that support your nervous system, restore your sense of agency, and reconnect us with each other.

1. Grounding Yourself Through Your Body (Somatic Regulation)

Trauma psychologists like Bessel van der Kolk, Stephen Porges, Judith Herman, and Peter Levine show that when trauma is chronic, the body learns to stay on high alert. This keeps the nervous system in survival mode and leaves your body braced for danger, even when the threat is over. Complex trauma reveals itself as irritability, tension, trouble focusing, emotional overwhelm, or feeling “numb”—not because you’re weak, but because your body hasn’t had a chance to return to safety.

Healing begins not with “thinking differently,” but with settling your nervous system. Start with:

• Slow, steady breathing
• Yoga or stretching
• Walking outdoors
• Soothing repetitive movement (knitting, music, gardening)

You’re teaching your body, gently: It’s safe to soften now.

2. Reclaiming a Sense of Agency

When we experience complex trauma, our life feels out of our control. We get overwhelmed by our inability to fix the big, looming problems that affect us. One remedy is to identify the small places where we still have choices. These might include:

• Choosing one daily rhythm (morning tea, nightly walk, a prayer service) as a ritual
• Tidying one small area instead of the whole house
• Completing one task, and letting that be enough

These micro-actions rebuild internal trust. They leave you feeling, “I can influence my life, even a little.”

3. Building Community and Co-Regulation

As humans, we regulate emotion together. Even brief, warm contact with another person reduces our cortisol levels that cause stress. Consider ways to include these in your life:

• A weekly call with one person whose presence steadies you
• Shared meals, however simple
• Volunteering or joining a small interest group

The antidote involves developing habits of consistent, safe contact. I’m not a futurist, but I believe that healthy human beings will soon create more intentional communities, both religious and non-religious.

If we are going to thrive, we must create ways to lift each other safely and in community.

4. Practicing Mindfulness as Warm Awareness

Mindfulness is not detachment or quieting the mind. Instead, it's a method to sit with yourself and appreciate what’s going on inside you—with kindness rather than judgement. You can think of mindfulness as something like prayer or meditation, but it’s really an awareness of what is going on inside your heart and within your body.

Mindfulness, a skill that Jon Kabat-Zinn brought into Western medicine, helps us stay with ourselves when life feels too large. This practice encourages us to celebrate who we are and want to become—and then to grow from that place.

A Meditation for Self-Gentleness

I offer you a mindful affirmation as a soothing self-parenting practice. Consider appealing to the universe to bring you warm, supportive energy.

I am fundamentally good. I don’t have to pretend.

I can go after what I want and need.

I am enough.

May the great forces be cheerleaders for me in my life. May my pain find healing. And may all the accountants in my life, spiritually and psychologically, just go away.

Let me allow myself to hear three special words: Go and thrive.

Read it slowly. Let it land.

You don’t need to believe all of it for it to help. You only need to be willing to hear it.

Moving Forward

As individuals and as a culture, we’re still processing collective emotional events that have been unfolding over years, not days. If you feel different today than you did at the beginning of 2020, there’s a reason. Nothing about the world or our nervous systems these past five years has been simple.

Healing begins with naming what has happened and then gently rebuilding your sense of safety, agency, connection, and self-compassion.

We are not meant to navigate trauma alone.

And we don’t have to.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.