Can we expect an unhealthy society to nurture healthy people?

By Psychologist Isa Pašalić

The old dilemma of causality arises with the question of which came first – the chicken or the egg. Similarly, the puzzle of whether healthy people create a healthy society or a healthy society creates healthy people presents a seemingly unsolvable proposition. Through this, I will try to find an answer to this question through the prism of psychotherapy and trauma healing.

People affected by trauma often experience problems in their relationships and in adapting to the society around them. They are unable to socialize or be accepted in a way that their inner self feels they should be. In most cases, we can hear people affected by trauma say that they feel trapped, tense, or with a pronounced feeling of being "dead inside".

As advice for their social problems, traumatized people are often recommended to change their behavior. While this can be useful advice in some situations, it does not work as expected for traumatized people because it does not change their inner feeling. Instead, such recommendations often generate a feeling of pretense and even greater disharmony with the social group. This is a result of the fact that, although we have changed the behavior of the traumatized person, we have not changed their inner feeling – and it is precisely this feeling that creates social disharmony.

Trauma healing work involves resolving the feelings that lead a person to "sabotage" themselves, thereby reducing their chances for healthy social and mental functioning. When we change the inner feeling by resolving trauma, the person returns to a state of improvement, balance, self-satisfaction, and self-esteem, and with that, healthy social behavior also returns.

The change of society is also based on this principle. We often witness attempts to forcibly change human behavior in the hope that society will be changed through it. However, such systems often fail. This is because, as with a traumatized person, changing behavior is not enough for a true change. In changing society, it is necessary to avoid the same mistake. To have a chance for a true societal change, it is necessary to change the collective feeling. By awakening the collective feeling, we also change the collective consciousness of society and its ability to generate change in its environment.

Every person has a natural tendency towards health and is capable of healing when given freedom, knowledge, and the opportunity to return to the path of health. Like an individual, society has the same tendency towards collective health. When given the opportunity to heal its collective wounds, society returns to a state of vitality and health, from which it is capable of generating change.

The answer seems clear: healthy people do indeed nurture a healthy society.