How Trauma Is Weaponized

"Authoritarians don’t just seize power—they hijack our nervous systems. When fear becomes the policy, compliance becomes the culture." — Mary Coughlin

This Is How Trauma Is Weaponized: A Trauma-Informed Response to Manufactured Crisis and Rising Authoritarianism

As someone who works at the intersection of trauma, systems, and human dignity, I read this post "Hitler Also Manufactured A Crisis To Destroy Democracy" with a heavy heart—but not a surprised one.

What we're witnessing is the deliberate manufacture and manipulation of crisis to activate fear, justify state violence, and consolidate control. This is not just political strategy—it is trauma strategy. And for those who have lived through personal, intergenerational, or institutional trauma, it’s a deeply familiar playbook.

Authoritarianism thrives on dysregulation. It disorients the public, destabilizes systems, and seizes moments of vulnerability to claim power under the guise of order. When a leader uses tanks, troops, and terror as props for performance, they are not “keeping us safe”—they are exploiting our nervous systems, bypassing our logic, and banking on our paralysis.

This is how trauma gets operationalized on a national scale.

And it is not new. From Hitler’s Reichstag fire to Jim Crow “law and order” campaigns, history reminds us that those in power often provoke chaos not to restore peace, but to eliminate dissent. When we fail to name this pattern, we retraumatize survivors and abandon our collective responsibility to safeguard democracy.

This is why a trauma-informed lens is not just a clinical tool—it’s a civic imperative.

It asks us to stay awake when we are tempted to numb out.
To seek truth when gaslighting becomes the norm.
To protect the most vulnerable when systems are designed to discard them.
To remember that safety is not just freedom from harm—it’s freedom from fear.

We must treat this moment not just as a political crisis, but as a relational emergency. Our democracy is not just a set of documents—it is a living body. And right now, that body is under assault.

Let us be the buffers.
Let us be the healers.
Let us be the ones who remember what care looks like—even here, even now.

With ferocious boldness,

Mary