We all have childhood, family & relational trauma from being socialized under capitalism

Learning the sociopolitical context of our pain is critical to coping with it

Hold up- all of us? Yes, all of us have traumatic childhoods and family dynamics to varying degrees. I know some of you might have a defensive response, either because you think your family is fairly functional or stable and cannot immediately identify any “obvious” childhood trauma OR you already know that you came from an abusive household and are convinced that most people have “healthy” family dynamics that you didn’t. Bear in mind, in our capitalist society where you’ve been shaped with individualism to focus on the “self” as opposed to the collective, you’ve been taught to even see your situation, struggles & context as unique. Liberation is about building solidarity and this includes breaking from the mold of individualism to see our pain as part of the complex dynamics of our interconnected ecosystem.

When we are born into oppression, raised in it, and socialized with values to uphold & perpetuate it, we normalize it and struggle to even identify violence and brutality when they are right in our face.

Side note: You can now sign up for my next workshop!

This newsletter will explore some foundations on this topic but the workshop will provide you with tangible resources to begin understanding your struggles and relational issues thru a political lens.

1. Systems of oppression shape our cultures to be oppressive by design and being raised to conform to oppressive systems is innately traumatizing in ways you might not even realize

There are layers to oppression- folks with less access to resources & privilege will carry more boulders on their back. However, at baseline, all human beings that are confined to our capitalist, colonial society are traumatized and thrown into a life of fight or flight survival mode. Your behavioral patterns, personality traits, fears, and perception of the world & yourself are driven by your trauma embedded into your core identity and subconscious, whether you are aware of it or not. However, building self awareness around what made you YOU, what happened to you and how it has come to shape your existence is how we can be more sentient, intentional beings.

Living under capitalism and all the oppressive systems it makes profitable produces two levels of trauma- 1) systemic trauma from being brutalized under the systems that deprive you of the right to life by demanding that you “earn” it and 2) interpersonal trauma from our relational dynamics being manipulated & desecrated by oppressive cultural norms and beliefs. People often associate “trauma” solely with overt physical abuse and violence and place everything else that is psychological or emotional in the “it wasn’t that bad” category. Ironically, that in itself tells you that it’s all relative. What exactly is “normal” parenting and what do “normal” relationships or family dynamics look like when we live in a society where our survival is based on how obedient we are to the state & how well we can conform to capitalism?

We lack agency, autonomy & free will under capitalism which means the lack of consent defines our existence. We never had a real choice when it came to our beliefs or participating in societal systems.

The most dominant forms of violence and abuse we all normalize aren’t stemming from our families or people but oppressive systems we are forced to survive under that we (at least early on) lack the agency to question. You were born into a world where you were never guaranteed safety, stability and security and were told everywhere you turned (from home to school) that you have no worth in society unless you produce capital and became traditionally “successful” within the arbitrary, limited, horrific confines of capitalism. You were told in your earliest years that you have to aspire to “make something” of yourself in order to gain access to food, water, shelter, healthcare and community. You were also told you had to internalize certain beliefs, norms and values from your family unit and immediate community even if you did not understand them. These believes dictated what you believe you MUST do, SHOULD do, HAVE to do in order to feel accepted and worthy in society.

You had to accept the society you were born into, even if it meant that by chance the identities you were born into created a lifelong trajectory where you struggled to survive. You had to accept heteropatriarchal norms shoved onto you. Most importantly, you had no agency because you had no choice to say “no”— you had to do as you were told from home to school because where else would you go? How else can a child obtain shelter and safety in a world that does not guarantee ANYONE that? I’d like you to think about how harsh your welcome into this world was- regardless of how “blessed” you think you are.

2. The nuclear family as a tool of social control

There are various “coercive forces” in society designed to keep you line- from admin or teachers at school charged with disciplining you, prisons & police to the family unit. The structure of the family as you know it- where unpaid domestic labor is relegated to women, came about under industrialism as a direct result of humans being commodified & objectified under capitalism. Most importantly, in order to function, capitalism has to destroy any community-based notions of family not restricted to the narrow definition of 2 caregivers, spouses or biological relatives.

We’re supposed to be raised by a village, not 2 people

Applying values of collectivist, nonwestern cultures & anarchy to the family— we are meant to be raised, supported & mentored by many people who collectively form our “village”. However, as capitalism makes “work” the center of our lives & builds societal infrastructure to isolate us— the responsibility of child rearing is at best relegated to 2 individuals who are tasked with meeting all your needs & shaping your perception of the world which isn’t an equitable power dynamic by any measure.

A society that provides us with basic survival resources is essential because a child does not consent to being born

Children are, by design, the most vulnerable, marginalized individuals in the world because they are born into a society that is designed to deprive them of any autonomy. Given that none of chose to be born, we should have basic access to survival sources once we are including community care. However, kids do whatever they have to to survive the families they were born into because where will they go? How else will they survive in a world defined by self-centered, individualism? It is critical to really understand the severity of this context because this is why we do everything to “make it work” with our families, at least initially. We have no choice. It’s why we normalize abuse or harm. It is also why parents often leverage power & authority over us. When we look at families where authoritarian parents tell their children how to live expecting unquestioning obedience- it is clear how the system of the nuclear family is in itself inequitable & not meant to keep children safe.

Survival is a shared burden & we need a village

As a collectivist species, diversity is critical to our wellbeing- from living in a diverse ecosystem forging relationships with non-human entities like flora & fauna to needing MANY caregivers. When we’re raised by a village, we are exposed to a diversity of perspectives, knowledge & forms of love. We are given care, acceptance & validation by many people which means we don’t have to be enslaved to the whims of 1 or 2 people. We have many sources of support which gives us AGENCY. We see the world through the eyes of many & that in itself teaches us how diversity is critical to our ecosystems. It teaches us that we can question, learn, explore & use a diversity of building blocks to define ourselves. It teaches us that we are fluid, non-binary beings. Everyone in our village is essential & play equally valuable roles and when any part of our village is missing or compromised, our individual & collective health are affected. When we are restricted to the confines of a small traditional family unit or circle of people who shape our world view- we see the world in binaries of “good/ evil” & are primed with made-up norms preventing us from questioning if the world could be any different.

However, even if we have many people who influence us— the fact that we live in a world defined by binaries of good/ bad where people have stringent views of what is right/ wrong means those oppressive norms are passed down to us. The trauma people experience across generations from living under oppression shapes their perception of the world & we get all this handed down to us the moment we enter this world. Ending generational trauma isn’t just about fixing problems within individuals, it’s about recognizing that systems that abuse us all are the root of all cycles of relational harm. Similarly, dismantling oppression begins with us addressing how we’ve all internalized, normalized & perpetuated it in our daily lives.

We are socially conditioned by people in our earliest childhood years to think that happiness hinges on us achieving arbitrary life milestones - from achieving capitalist metrics of success to fitting the mold of traditional monogamy & create the idealized “white picket fence” life. As we grow up, we realize no matter how many boxes we tick off, we are still left feeling scared, alone & afraid of the “shoe dropping”. This comes from society itself being the greatest source of abandonment anxiety. A capitalist society commodifies everyone as a tool of mass production to generate profits- humans are labeled as useless if they don’t fit capitalist metrics of productivity.

3. Education as a tool to force conformity to oppressive capitalist norms & obedience to the state

In order to get you to buy into capitalism, the state surrounds you with reinforcers to get you to fall back in line every time you begin to think “out of the box”. School is a primary tool of social control tasked with getting you to believe that competition is the norm. Children are desperate to connect with other human beings & the rest of their ecosystem. The infrastructure of education under the state keeps you indoors for majority of the day, exhausts you as you are forced to sit through repetitive instruction & thrust in an environment that breeds isolation.

Your learning hinges on you aspiring to be superior to your peers. Instead of being taught critical information that would liberate you- like how to forge reciprocal relationships, build emotional maturity and be altruistic, you are subject to rigorous exams that constantly force you to base your worth on arbitrary metrics of excellence & compare yourself to the performance of your peers. You are told to aspire to individual ambitions, personal goals, & those goals are about climbing the ladder to have more wealth & power over others. Considering you spent most of your life in classrooms- it helps to see how capitalism & the state design public spaces to fabricate scarcity & competition. We learn best by cooperating & collaborating, not by test taking. There is also no reason why some of us who “succeed” in conforming are uplifting academically over others who excel are endeavors outside the limiting classroom.

Examples of the political context behind harmful, toxic relational dynamics & the ways we cope with them

The dangers of mainstream trauma “healing” approaches

You might have heard of books like “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”, “The Body Keeps Score”, “Attached”, “Healing Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers”, “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” etc. Early on in my journey to understand my childhood or the abusive romantic dynamic I was in at the time- I read these books and it was helpful to see that I was not alone in experiencing these patterns of relational distress. It helped for me to know that childhood trauma was pervasive & it shaped our adult relationships. However, I also internalized 2 types of subtle harmful messaging as I read these books (all written by privileged, white people in western countries) that lacked any sociopolitical context:

1. They all reduced harm & abuse to “bad people” & individualized problems that were systemic. They conveniently left out any information about the violent, oppressive systems that brutalize us all, condition us with oppressive ideologies & are the primary forces of abuse, coercion & authoritarian trauma dominating all of us. While some books alluded to intergenerational trauma, they were all sanitized, sterilized, “apolitical” in that they avoided explicitly expanding on the impact of capitalism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, etc on our communities & relational dynamics. This context is everything because harm stems from bad systems, not bad people. However, we live in a carceral society that uses binaries of “good/ bad people” to justify prisons, police & imperialism.

2. All these books pathologized harm & the coping mechanisms people develop to survive the things that have happened to them. There is quiet a bit of fear mongering in most of these books. As Dr. Gibson says in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents:

“At the severe end of the spectrum, those ‘emotional’ parents are, quite frankly, mentally ill. They may be psychotic or bipolar, or have narcissistic or borderline personality disorder… Driven parents usually grew up in an emotionally depriving environment. They learned to get by on their own efforts rather than expecting to be nurtured. Often self-made, they’re proud of their independence. They fear that their children will embarrass them by not succeeding, yet they can’t offer their children the unconditional acceptance that would give them a secure foundation from which to go out and achieve."

Now, it is so apparent to me that this book assumes capitalism to be a good system & the only way our societies are meant to exist. It operates on values of individualism & pathologizes human responses to stress as disorders or diseases that are biologically ingrained. Nobody is self-made & people shouldn’t be given unconditional acceptance so they can “go out and achieve” but simply because we exist. When the structure of society itself isn’t questioned & oppressive systems aren’t seen as oppressive, books like this normalize oppressive values or norms.

A political, collectivist approach to addressing our trauma

The lens of anarchy & abolition focus on identifying the systemic roots of our pain because this is how we build community & solidarity which in itself is a liberating process. It isn’t just something “wrong” with you, or your family, or the toxic people you were in relationships with or the generations before them- we are all abused as victims of oppression. We see that breaking micro cycles of violence requires us to see ourselves just as capable of harm as anyone else given the right context.

When we reduce the source of our trauma to select individuals, we also miss the ongoing systemic trauma we’re constantly exposed to. Part of understanding how we’ve been socialized with capitalist, colonial beliefs & oppressive social constructs throughout our childhood, is to see how we may still have these patterns show up in our relational dynamics today. My trauma responses surface not only when I’m around people who are like my authoritarian mother but when I’m exposed to authoritarian institutions, strict hierarchies & power dynamics. I overworked myself my whole life because it wasn’t just my mother that made me feel as though I was only worth looking at when I “excelled” but having to navigate immigration in the U.S. & bouncing between countries by whole life in a world of made-up borders & nation states has forced me to feel like I need to be “exceptional” to be worthy of any stability. Even though, I was by sheer chance born in the Global South in a poor community, it has shaped the level of access I have to basic survival resources under the global system of capitalism which is reformed 21st century colonialism.

Having sociopolitical context to your pain, distress, relational issues— allows you to assess what you need to work on to build a sustainable foundation you can call home with decentralized equitable relationships. It can help you understand why you find it difficult to let go of certain patterns or find yourself repeating harmful patterns or stuck/ stagnant. It helps you define boundaries for how you engage not just with people but capitalism itself. It helps you identify where you have more agency today than you did as a child to make different choices to break from cycles of harm. Systems of oppression are upheld by cultures of oppression & to dismantle them, we must understand how growing up in this society has weighed on us.

In solidarity always,

Ayesha.