The Collective Unraveling

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Kalveylcsw.substack.com

Over the last several years, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly interested in learning more about systemic trauma, collective experiences, and the history of systemic cycles.

As a mental health therapist whose main work environment is 1:1 in person and online, I get micro dosed perspectives on humanity. However, I’ve discovered and become quite skilled through my work with clients at finding patterns, belief systems, and connections with subconscious material. While I deeply enjoy my 1:1 client work, I find myself wanting to stretch my viewpoint and this personal and professional curiosity to a bird’s eye or even spaceship vista.

Several years ago I read Neil Howe’s book, “The Fourth Turning is Here,” published in 2023. Howe studies historic cycles in civilization and posits that we are nearing the end of a “fourth quarter of a modern Saeculum” [roughly an eighty to one hundred year span of time.] The fourth quarter in a Saeculum is called “The Crisis,” as it denotes a time of strife, war, high levels of conflict and discord and general upheaval. The end of a fourth quarter crisis era is followed by the beginning of a new Saeculum, bringing renewed hope and much needed change. Howe writes, “Americans will gain, by the end of the Fourth Turning, a unique opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people. They will be able to solve long term national problems and perhaps lead the way in solving global problems as well. This too is part of the Fourth Turning historical track record.”

The further I uncover and understand the connections between us as individuals and us as societal collectives, I find myself feeling more certain about a few things. First, I’ll say the more I learn, the more I realize there’s so much I and we don’t know and don’t have the capacity to comprehend, even though our egos might try to convince us otherwise. Second, we as a human species are undergoing a deep rooted epochal evolution. We are in the midst of a massive transformational upgrade, regarding our consciousness as humans. We are also simultaneously going through large scale systems collapse. And third, that we as individuals make decisions throughout our day as we try to get through this incredibly grief stricken, shocking and brutal time, that have an impact on others. And we must always remember that.

The systems that are crumbling are not only structural and observable such as the education, housing, banking, political and financial institutions but we are also seeing the more invisible systems being openly discussed and challenged such as patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, violence against women and children, racism, xenophobia. The shadowy darkness and injustice, shame and suffering associated with these outdated, exploitative and dangerous systems is spotlighted for us all to see. I believe this is a significant and meaningful part of the process towards a more evolved conscious within humans. I am by no means trying to infer emotional bypassing or minimize the pain and suffering that any of us may be experiencing throughout this disturbing and at times graphic process. Quite the contrary, we need to feel what is happening, we need to grieve what is passing, and also grieve the kind of world we thought we had been living inside all these decades and centuries.

I am rather emphasizing the need for our societies and our world to suffer deeply in order to be awakened to and accepting of the changes required for the evolution of consciousness to occur. We are being forced as a collective, to really see clearly the horrors with our own eyes and ears. We are witnessing, on full blast, an impossible to refute understanding of how damaging, destructive and unsustainable these systems are. It is no longer tolerably possible to numb enough, look away enough, dismiss enough, avoid enough, or pretend enough. Deep transformational change occurs alongside deep pain and suffering, not comfort and ease.

Within the therapeutic setting, this reminds me of a significant aspect of the healing process most clients go through in their therapy journey. It occurs when a client begins to deconstruct their family and religious systems, different roles of family members, relational patterns, unspoken expectations etc. When a client begins to individuate from their birth family and is no longer idealizing or demonizing their parent[s], but rather seeing their parents as flawed and wounded, they will be motivated to continue the growth process, requiring the grieving of the parent[s] or family they thought and/wished they had but now see the wholeness of the truth rather than a fragmented or distorted version of the truth. This is not a rejection of the parents themselves, but instead an unshackling liberation from the internalized, ancestral woundedness, patterns, beliefs and distortions that have been insidiously transmitted through intergenerations. We are at that same point as a human species

We as individuals and collectively are being summoned to look at the truth, feel, process and grieve its impact on us, accept that it isn’t what we thought it was. And in fact, accept that it is chock full of darkness, fear, woundedness, distortion, and separation. Only then, will we be able to collectively shift our energy and hearts towards creation of systems that are just and benefit all, and move toward wholeness as individuals, groups and societies, invested in a deeper understanding of the truth that we are all connected and always have been.