Hello and welcome to this special episode of Outrage and Optimism.

This week we bring you a fascinating conversation that Tom Paul and I had with Thomas Hubel a few months ago. He is the author of the book, Healing Collective Trauma, a process for integrating our intergenerational and cultural wounds and the book Atuned

practicing interdependence to heal our trauma and our world.

Thomas is a teacher, author, and international facilitator.

And since 2004, he has taught and facilitated programs on trauma healing with more than 100,000 people

worldwide, including courses online. We invited Thomas onto the podcast to help us

unpack the way that trauma is spoken about and experienced by those working and thinking about the

climate crisis. But let me put this conversation into a broader context.

This conversation has no intent to deny that we are witnessing so many horrendous killings in the Middle East, in the Ukraine, in

Myanmar and elsewhere, and that these are deeply traumatic for those who live them directly and for many others.

This conversation is also not intended to deny that there are not only political and war situations

that are traumatic, but situations of unequal power and abuse of authority or even superior physical strength

that can lead to traumatic experiences.

So we do not mean to deny any of this.

And I personally have been already very open

about the fact that I have been through my share of experiences

that I perceived and experienced as traumatic when they happened, but that I am grateful to have been able to work

them through to the point where I remember them for sure but they no longer control my life.

But fast forward today here where we are.

I question what happens when the word trauma is used to refer to such

a broad array of human experiences that it tragically ends up losing its meaning?

Or does each individual decide on their own,

...