Decolonizing Trauma Healing with Dr. Laura Brown

Season 5 of the How We Can Heal Podcast is sponsored by SimplePractice.If you want to simplify the business side of your work, I highly recommend Simple Practice! Right now they’re offering a special 7-day free trial with 70% off your first 4 months for How We Can Heal listeners.Go to https://www.simplepractice.com/howwecanheal to take advantage of this offer today!-----This episode is also sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD). The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation is an international, non-profit, professional association organized to develop and promote comprehensive, clinically effective and empirically based resources and responses to trauma and dissociation and to address its relevance to other theoretical constructs. Visit https://cfas.isst-d.org/ to access educational offerings for both professionals and non-professionals To learn more and become a member, visit: https://www.isst-d.org/---What if everything we've been taught about trauma and healing has been filtered through a colonial lens? Dr. Laura Brown —psychologist, author, and activist with over 40 years of groundbreaking work in feminist therapy—challenges us to reimagine healing outside the medical model that has dominated Western thinking.Dr. Brown takes us on a profound journey from her early activism in the 1960s through her pioneering work in trauma psychology, weaving together personal narrative with radical theory. She articulates how medical systems have colonized healing processes that humans have practiced for millennia, turning natural responses to harm into "disorders" requiring professional intervention. "People have been healing from trauma since human beings became human beings," she reminds us, inviting practitioners to question the foundations of conventional approaches.The conversation expands beyond clinical settings to examine how trauma and power operate in our broader society. Dr. Brown offers wisdom about maintaining our integrity and voice in challenging times, protecting our nervous systems from becoming hijacked by those who don't deserve access to our activation, and finding small yet meaningful ways to resist injustice daily. Her perspective on trauma work as inherently political challenges the false neutrality many clinicians adopt, while her vision of collaborative healing relationships dismantles hierarchies between "expert" and "patient."All while navigating cancer recovery and a vocal disorder affecting her speech, Dr. Brown embodies the resilience she describes, finding joy in aikido, nature, friendship, and beauty. Her message inspires hope not through toxic positivity but through genuine engagement with both suffering and possibility. Whether you're a healing professional or someone on your own recovery journey, this episode will transform how you think about trauma, power, and our collective capacity for change.Want to keep creating opportunities for healing together? Subscribe at howwecanheal.com to continue exploring how we can create more humble, culturally responsive approaches to trauma that honor every person's inherent power and wisdom.Support the show