Holding space for our traumatized Gen Zers

Reflecting on the collective trauma of COVID

“Trauma—injury to our mind, body, and spirit—comes sooner or later for everyone.”

~Dr. James S. Gordon

I gave a talk at the Honors College at Austin Peay last week, discussing trauma, unpacking what that means for the Honors students.

It was most interesting at the end of the talk:

At first many didn’t have much to say, even when I pressed them to think about how trauma understanding and approaches may be useful and important to their future professions, as nurses, social workers, etc.

However, when I asked about their COVID experiences and encouraged them to realize that time as dire, catastrophic and quite traumatic for many of them—

Their engagement sharpened. They participated, they made more eye contact. They listened.

Ever since we returned to in-person classes in 2021, I have been asking students about their experiences with living through the pandemic and how it shaped their lives and high school experiences.

And each time I pose these questions and facilitate these discussions, I learn something new.

It used to be that my students were shaped by the pandemic because they were unable to go their Proms, homecoming and high school graduations.

Now, it’s been a few years and the students I am asking were 14 or 15 when the pandemic started.

Most startling is that no one has asked them about their experiences, to reflect on them, to process them, to debrief them.

As they opened up, it became obvious that they endured experiences that—at best were stressful or full of grief, but at worst, and I think probably more accurately, were traumatic for them.

Some said that they felt stuck at the age that they were when the pandemic happened, socially, in maturity. That even though they celebrated their 19th or 20th birthday recently that they didn’t feel that they were those ages, really.

Another mentioned that her mother was a nurse and the attention was on her and if she was okay during the pandemic. But the student was terrified her mother would die and she was isolated because her mom would quarantine herself from her kid just to be safe.

Another said that she had lost three people in a close period of time and she still grieves that. She didn’t know how to process it and no one could help her so she had to teach herself. So now she lets herself journal or cry to cope.

I told them that those experiences sound very hard. It wasn’t fair to them to have their formative years shaped so. A lot of development and memories were stolen from them.

I validated their experiences—as a Rhetorician / College Professor / PTSD survivor—could very well be considered as trauma.

Their facial expressions changed after I said that.

I joked with them that we need to disband the trauma police and who gets to decide what is traumatic enough to be considered trauma.

But I said—people often look to me as someone who has endured a lot and then minimize their own experiences as not trauma by comparing it to what I went through.

And I implored them not to do that.

I reassured them that they have a right to own all of their experiences and label them however best described how they endured them and how they embodied them.

It is amazing what just holding space for people, listening to them, validating them, and allowing them to own their own hard experiences without judgment or comparison can really do for people.

They can come alive and feel seen and heard and really—

It means so much.