When confronting collective trauma took a toll on my psyche and my health
Dawn Kelly | asKING QUESTIONS
I acknowledge the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live in Midland.
I am currently studying a Certificate IV in Mental Health. Recently, I completed a unit on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Safety. Of all the units I have studied, this was the one I found the most difficult.
Not because I did not want to learn the material.
It was difficult because I allowed myself to feel it.
The unit covered colonisation, frontier violence, dispossession, the forced removal of children, the Stolen Generations, abuse, cultural suppression and the continuing effects of intergenerational trauma.
This was not information I could read, memorise and neatly put away when I closed my computer. It entered my thoughts. It affected me emotionally. It challenged the way I looked at Australian history, the systems governing us and the suffering I see around me every day.
I did not realise at first how much I was carrying.
Then my vision blurred.
The moment my body made me stop
After an intense period of study, I woke from an afternoon nap and went outside. Almost immediately, I noticed that my long-distance vision was blurred. Then I experienced flashes of light.
For approximately half an hour, I could not see properly.
It concerned me.
I had never experienced anything like it before. I had my eyes examined and saw my GP. After other concerns were considered, the conclusion was that I had experienced a visual migraine, also known as migraine aura.
Doctor Google explains that migraine aura can involve flashing lights, blind spots, zigzag patterns and temporary changes in vision. Stress, fatigue, dehydration, missed meals, disrupted sleep and prolonged screen use can all contribute to the conditions in which a migraine may be triggered.
I understand that there may have been several physical factors involved. I had been concentrating intensely and spending a long time in front of a screen. I was extremely fatigued.
But I do not believe the experience can be separated from the emotional and psychological load I had been carrying.
I cannot prove that the subject matter caused the migraine. That would be too simplistic, and I did the responsible thing by having the symptoms medically assessed. What I can say is that the timing felt significant. My mind had been taking in more and more confronting material, my emotions had become saturated, and eventually my body forced me to stop.
The psychological toll had become physical.
My blurred vision became a moment of clarity.
When history stopped being abstract
I found this unit confronting because the history did not feel safely contained in the past.
The more I learned about dispossession, forced assimilation, the removal of children and the deliberate disruption of culture, family and connection to Country, the more difficult it became to see these events as isolated historical chapters.
Trauma does not simply end when a law changes, a policy is abandoned or a government apologises. Unresolved trauma can move through families, communities, institutions and generations.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recognises that colonisation, dispossession and the forced removal of children have contributed to ongoing intergenerational trauma. It also recognises that connection to family, community, culture and Country can be protective for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing.
That distinction is essential.
Aboriginal culture is not the cause of the suffering. Culture, identity, kinship, spirituality and connection to Country are sources of strength. The damage came from the political and institutional disruption of those connections. Just like what is happening right now in the political landscape collectively.
As I absorbed this history, I felt grief, anger and a sense of helplessness. I found myself thinking about what had been taken, what had survived and how much pain continues to be carried.
It weighed heavily on my psyche.
What I see in Midland
I live in Midland, on Whadjuk Noongar Country in the Warruwarrin Embassy. I do not encounter trauma only through textbooks, videos and assessments.
I see homelessness. I see the effects of drug and alcohol dependence. I see poverty, crime, violence, mental distress and people disconnected from family, community and purpose. Through my volunteering, my work and my mental health studies, I meet people carrying complex stories of grief, abuse, displacement and survival.
I am not claiming that every person experiencing homelessness or addiction has the same history. I am not suggesting that disadvantage defines Aboriginal people. It does not.
What changed for me was the depth of the questions I began asking.
Instead of looking only at a person’s behaviour, I found myself asking what had happened before that behaviour became visible.
What happens when children are removed from their families?
What happens when language, ceremony and cultural identity are suppressed?
What happens when people are separated from Country and sacred ways of understanding their place in the world?
What happens when grief is denied, minimised or passed silently from one generation to the next?
And what happens to all of us when we live within the consequences but refuse to understand their origins?
The course material and the reality outside my front door began reinforcing one another. I could no longer keep the history in one mental compartment and present-day suffering in another.
I began to see the threads connecting them.
Colonisation was a political takeover
Colonisation was not simply the arrival of one group of people on the land of another. It was a political takeover.
The British Crown claimed authority over a continent that was already inhabited, governed and cared for by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples according to their own laws, cultures and sacred relationships with Country.
Land was claimed. Political authority was imposed. Existing systems of law, knowledge and custodianship were disregarded or deliberately undermined. People were displaced, controlled and subjected to policies created by governments that assumed the right to determine how they should live.
Understanding this made me consider political power more broadly.
I began asking whether ordinary Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, are still being made pawns in political struggles over the identity and future of this country. Globalisation, a one world government and a one world religion being imposed on us, Same Sh*t Different Day (SSDD).
Our grief, guilt, fear, anger, identity and history can all be manipulated. People can be separated into opposing groups while those holding political and institutional power remain largely unexamined.
I am uncomfortable when genuine acknowledgement is reduced to virtue signalling. Words can be repeated publicly to demonstrate the correct political position while very little changes for the people experiencing homelessness, addiction, poverty, violence and cultural disconnection.
Saying the approved words is not the same as listening. It is not the same as building genuine relationships, understanding history or taking meaningful action.
At the same time, rejecting political performance does not require us to deny what happened. We can recognise the violence and injustice of colonisation, honour the survival of the world’s oldest continuing cultures and respect the unique relationship of First Nations people with Country without allowing ourselves to be divided into permanent camps of blame, guilt and resentment.
I believe we all belong here.
That does not erase the distinct history, culture or authority of Australia’s First Peoples. It means that everyone who calls Australia home has a responsibility to care for this land and for one another.
We are not all Traditional Custodians in the same historical and cultural sense, but we can all choose to live as custodians. We can respect the land, protect it for future generations and learn from the sacred wisdom Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have carried through their ancestors.
Political systems may benefit when people remain frightened, angry and divided. Healing asks something different of us. It asks us to face history honestly while refusing to let that history be weaponised to turn ordinary people against one another.
The collective pain body
In my own spiritual language, I understand some of this as the collective pain body.
This is not a clinical diagnosis, and I do not use the term to speak on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is the language I use to understand how unprocessed pain can remain alive within individuals, families, communities and the wider collective.
Pain that is denied does not necessarily disappear.
It may show itself through anger, shame, fear, numbness, addiction, fractured relationships, violence or repeated cycles of harm. It can also be expressed through defensiveness and the refusal to listen or acknowledge what happened.
While studying, I felt as though I was touching this field of collective pain. Intellectually, I was trying to understand cultural safety. Emotionally, I was absorbing stories of dispossession, abuse, forced removal and cultural disruption. Spiritually, I was contemplating the loss of connection to land, ancestors and sacred ways. At the same time, I was seeing human suffering in the community around me.
I kept taking it in without creating enough space to release or process it.
Eventually, something in me reached capacity.
Then my vision blurred.
What cultural safety came to mean to me
Before completing this unit, I understood cultural safety mainly as a set of respectful workplace practices. I now understand that it asks something much deeper of me.
It asks me to examine my own assumptions.
It asks me to notice how power operates through systems and institutions.
It asks me to listen without immediately defending, correcting or making the experience about myself.
It asks me to recognise that each person is the expert in their own cultural identity and lived experience.
It asks me to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people not only through trauma or disadvantage, but through strength, survival, knowledge, family, spirituality, culture and enduring connection to Country.
Most importantly, cultural safety is not something I can simply declare that I provide. The person receiving support determines whether an interaction feels culturally safe. My responsibility is to remain respectful, accountable, curious and willing to learn.
I also learned that empathy needs boundaries. Feeling deeply may help me understand, but absorbing pain until it damages my own wellbeing will not help the people I hope to support.
Listening to what my body was telling me
This experience reminded me that becoming a mental health support worker is not only about completing assessments, learning theories and memorising policies.
It requires the capacity to sit with difficult truths without looking away. It also requires me to recognise when my own nervous system needs care.
If I am going to support other people through trauma, grief and distress, I need to understand my limits. I need to notice when I am becoming emotionally saturated. I need to take breaks, remain hydrated, eat properly, step away from the screen, spend time outside and give myself space to process confronting material.
I need to learn the difference between witnessing another person’s pain and carrying it as my own.
That is not weakness. It is part of practising responsibly.
My vision returned to normal after approximately half an hour, but the clarity remained.
I had been trying to see and understand something enormous. For a brief period, my physical vision became distorted, but my deeper perception became clearer.
I saw that the effects of colonisation are not confined to history books.
I saw that intergenerational trauma is not an abstract theory.
I saw that symbolic political language is not a substitute for meaningful change.
I saw that cultural safety is not political correctness or a box to be ticked.
And I saw that I cannot contribute to healing if I ignore what the work is doing to my own mind, body and spirit.
Perhaps healing begins when we are willing to see what has been hidden, hear what has been silenced and acknowledge what has been carried for generations.
Perhaps it also requires us to refuse division, recognise our shared humanity and accept our collective responsibility for the land on which we now live.
The question I am left asking is this:
If we refuse to understand the wound, how can we ever become part of the healing?
Is your body asking you to listen?
Sometimes the body speaks through pain, tension, fatigue, emotional heaviness, restricted movement or the quiet feeling that something is no longer in balance.
My own experience reminded me how important it is to stop, listen and create space for the body and nervous system to settle.
If your body has been asking for your attention, I invite you to book a session with me. Together, we can gently explore what you are holding physically, emotionally and energetically, and support you to reconnect with your body’s natural wisdom.
Sessions may include bioelectric meridian therapy, fascia release, bodywork, energetic alignment and intuitive guidance, individually tailored to meet you where you are.
Appointments are available in Midland and Collie.
Book your session with Dawn and give yourself permission to stop, breathe and listen.
Sources and further reading
- Healthdirect Australia: Migraine
- Healthdirect Australia: Headaches and common triggers
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: Determinants of health for First Nations people
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: First Nations health and wellbeing
- The Healing Foundation: Intergenerational trauma
- City of Swan: Aboriginal history
Personal note: This article describes my own experience and reflections. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to speak on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. New, persistent or unusual changes in vision should be medically assessed.
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