Trauma has become a thriving industry. I have daily newsletters landing in my inbox selling masterclasses, coaching programmes, retreats, conferences, and individual therapy sessions. And as much as I believe that trauma awareness is a profoundly positive development, I sometimes find myself questioning the systems that allow, and even require, people’s pain and misfortune to become a source of profit. Please note that this article is not an attack on individual therapists or practitioners who are making a living from skills that are urgently needed. It is, however, a reflection on a society in which healing has become a commodity that must be bought.
A friend recently remarked that therapy and healing work are a privilege, because many people simply do not have the resources, in terms of money and time, to engage in them. Healing takes time, particularly when serious developmental trauma is involved, and it often comes with phases of low productivity or even breakdown.
When I experienced burnout at the age of 27, I had the luxury of not working for a year because I’d just closed down a highly successful company and was therefore financially secure enough to do so. A few years later, when my old identity really began to fall away in a different process, it took me two years to reorient. Not every healing journey is as visible or dramatic as this, but the underlying reality remains the same: trauma healing requires space, and that space is unevenly distributed.
Are we really the architects of our own lives?
I think that the idea of everyone being the architect of their own life is only partially true. Not everyone begins from the same starting point, with the same opportunities, resources, or psychological constitution. Some people are abandoned by drug-addicted parents and carry the consequences of that rupture throughout their entire lives. Others are born into environments shaped by violence, criminality, or coercion, where meaningful choice is severely constrained. Children raised in mafia families, for instance, grow up inside systems that reward loyalty and punish deviation. The sons of El Chapo offer a stark illustration of lives shaped under extreme constraint. Born into a system of violence and criminal power, their futures were largely determined long before adulthood, with outcomes ranging from imprisonment to life on the run.
And healing is not only a question of money or time. For many people, a deeper fear arises much earlier: How do I continue to function in my daily life, in a high-stress job, or as the person who earns a living for my family, if I begin to look at the very trauma that drives me? What if I fall apart? What if I do not like what emerges?
What if the shame I have learned to hide so well from the outside world, the same shame that may have fuelled my success in the first place, comes to the surface and demands to be felt? What if it turns out that the life I am living is a lie I tell myself in order to keep going? And if that story collapses, then what? Who am I beyond my carefully constructed personality?
Systemic failure
We live in a society that places a disproportionate emphasis on productivity, with the result that healing and emotional wellbeing are treated as secondary concerns. Within this framework, care is often reduced to what is strictly necessary to restore basic functioning. A socially disadvantaged person with severe trauma may, for example, receive eight sessions of CBT (cognitive-behavioural therapy) through the NHS, with the implicit expectation that this will be sufficient to enable them to return to work and cope again.
At the same time, vast sums of public money are channelled into large-scale political projects and military spending, often with questionable long-term benefit. The contrast reveals a deeper truth: resources are available, but collective priorities consistently favour economic and ideological agendas over sustained human care.
Trauma is never just personal
Yet, trauma healing should be a collective priority, because unresolved trauma does not remain private. It shapes relationships, institutions, and entire societies. When early wounds are left unaddressed, they can harden into compensatory patterns such as grandiosity, aggression, and the need for domination – patterns that do not disappear when individuals acquire power.
History offers sobering examples of how personal pathology can become politically catastrophic. It is not unreasonable to ask how differently the twentieth century might have unfolded if figures such as Adolf Hitler had received psychological support early in life, rather than having their grievances amplified by ideology and circumstance. More broadly, when leaders lack self-awareness and emotional regulation, their unresolved inner conflicts are often acted out on a global stage.
A society that neglects trauma healing at the individual level should not be surprised when the consequences surface collectively. Widespread self-awareness and empathy would not eliminate all conflict, but they might significantly reduce the scale and destructiveness of the violence we continue to normalise.
There is also an uncomfortable economic dimension to all of this. Entire industries now exist around trauma, distress, and dysregulation, while far less investment is made in the social conditions that produce them. Systems tend to favour interventions that restore basic functioning quickly, rather than those that support long-term integration and change. In this sense, trauma is often treated as a recurring condition to be managed, instead of a signal pointing to deeper structural failures.
What might an alternative model look like, and how could it be achieved?
First, access to therapy should not depend on personal wealth. Psychological support ought to be available through public funding to anyone who needs it and cannot afford private care. This would require treating therapy as essential infrastructure rather than an optional add-on to healthcare.
Crucially, therapists should be remunerated for publicly funded work at rates comparable to those they charge in private practice. Clear national guidelines would be needed to establish fair fees, along with adequate and protected funding streams. Without this, public provision will continue to rely on underpaid labour, long waiting lists, and truncated forms of care that prioritise speed over depth.
As with physical health, the focus should shift from cure to prevention. This would mean investing in education for children and parents, normalising emotional literacy early on, and intervening before patterns of distress become entrenched. It would also require greater understanding from workplaces, where stress, overload, and emotional strain are still too often treated as personal weaknesses rather than structural problems.
Perhaps this invites an even more uncomfortable question. Do we simply ask too much of people? Do we expect constant productivity in a way that leaves little room for vulnerability, care, or recovery? And might a society that worked less, rested more, and valued emotional wellbeing more highly be not only healthier, but also more humane?
This kind of shift would not happen overnight. It may take several generations, but it is not unrealistic. It would require political leadership that is less concerned with personal power and short-term gains, and more committed to collective welfare, long-term thinking, and social repair. Without this change in priorities, trauma will continue to be managed at the margins rather than addressed at its roots.
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