When 2025 Feels Like Repeated Trauma: A Decolonized Guide for Sensitive, Intersectional Souls
Has 2025 felt especially heavy for you?
Between political upheaval, job insecurity, global conflict, climate anxiety, and the relentless sense that something else is always about to happen, many sensitive people are asking the same question:
Why can’t I catch my breath?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or emotionally exhausted looking back on 2025, I want to begin with this:
I hear you. Your response makes complete sense.
This Isn’t Just Stress — It’s Repeated Trauma Exposure
What many of us are experiencing in 2025 isn’t a single stressful event. It’s repeated exposure to collective trauma — political instability, economic precarity, climate grief, and threats to bodily and communal safety that feel ongoing and inescapable.
When trauma is repeated over time, especially without adequate safety or recovery, it often manifests as Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). This is particularly true for people in marginalized and intersectional bodies who experience the brunt of oppression, especially as current events echo historical and generational trauma.
For many — especially under another Trump-era political reality — the nervous system doesn’t experience these events as new; the brain and body experience them as encoded danger.
Recognizing this legacy pattern matters, because the question becomes less:
“I can’t adapt to the times of the day — what’s wrong with me?”
And more:
“My reaction is a typical response to ongoing post-colonial acts. How do I care for myself inside a system that keeps recreating harm?”
Nervous System Care Is Not Optional — It’s Foundational
To manage the ongoing collective trauma that is pervasive in our time, we must hold space for healing while still functioning in society. Objectively holding space to emotionally process traumatic exposure, manage triggers, and recreate safety — both physically and emotionally — is key to sustainable coping.
Our nervous systems require us to move beyond intellectualizing and to integrate with our bodies, which is a pillar of healing.
Some foundational supports for C-PTSD and collective trauma include:
Nervous system regulation (slowing, grounding, resourcing)
Somatic practices that help the body release stored stress
Being around safer people — those who name reality rather than gaslight it
The Subtle Trauma of the Consumerism Season
To further understand the layers of pressure we experience this time of year, we must also unpack that we are in a season of consumerism. In the post-colonial U.S., we tie celebration and the culmination of the year to the capitalist tradition of consumption.
In doing so, we pair joy, affection, connection, family, spirituality, and tradition with unrelenting buying. As we move from Black Friday into what I call “capitalism-consumerism Christmas,” many subconscious messages intensify, as connection — an emotional need — becomes tied to the ability to participate materially:
If I don’t have enough money, I don’t have value.
If I can’t give materially, I don’t matter.
My worth is tied to productivity and output.
As an intuitive empath, I feel these collective messages strongly — and many of you do too.
A decolonized mental health lens invites us to pause and say:
I see what this is — and I refuse to let capitalism define my worth.
Your value is inherent. It comes from your spirit, your inner divinity — not your spending power.
Minimalism as a Way to Decolonize Consumerism
Understanding how capitalism creates conditional value — particularly around belonging and joy during the holidays — one practice I personally lean into during this season is minimalism.
Minimalism involves intentionally considering the items in your space in terms of meaning, purpose, and function. It is a way to express your larger values through your belongings — such as love for the Earth — and to exercise locus of control over your space, resources, and lifestyle, rather than allowing capitalism to dictate how you should live.
Minimalism can look like:
Being mindful about impulse spending
Choosing fewer, more meaningful gifts
Redefining generosity outside of money
Consider gifts that are:
Made, grown, or repurposed
Acts of service or care
Quality time or sacred rituals
Generosity does not live inside a capitalist box.
We get to define what feels nourishing, calming, and safe for our bodies.
Family, Estrangement, and Redefining Tradition
Another significant stressor many of us face is a byproduct of how post-colonialism has affected belonging in our society. Many of us are asked to be in close proximity to people who feel unsafe, or conversely, we struggle with loneliness even when people are around, as society often asks us to present a façade rather than bring our whole selves — fully accepted — to the table.
When asked to be around unsafe people — such as harmful family members — or when experiencing estrangement or lack of support, many trauma survivors struggle during the holidays and feel isolation, grief, and heightened triggers.
For this reason, it’s important to remember that blood ties do not always equate to belonging, nor do the people historically associated with tradition in our formative years hold the exclusive definition of what those traditions are.
You are allowed to:
Reimagine rituals
Build chosen family
Connect with community in ways that affirm your identity
Step away from spaces that require you to shrink or self-abandon
This is especially important for intersectional people who often feel pressured to minimize one part of themselves to belong in another space.
You deserve environments where all of you is welcome.
A Brief Astrological Reflection on 2025
As we reflect on 2025, many of us notice that this year has felt more grievous than even other tumultuous periods in the past. When contemplating collective experiences, I often turn to spirituality — particularly astrology — to understand broader energetic themes.
From a spiritual lens, many of us are still integrating the effects of recent planetary retrogrades, namely Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune, which made November into early December particularly painful. While communication, goal-planning, and intuitive clarity have improved, Uranus remains retrograde — having moved from Sagittarius into Capricorn at the Winter Solstice.
Retrograde Uranian energy means that the electric innovation that fuels forward movement feels unplugged — even silent — right now. Avant-garde thinking and “out of the box” solutions feel distant, creating a strange staleness in the air.
This vacuum, in light of 2025, creates a deep pocket of reflection, as answers for collective societal movement feel absent.
This confluence of factors is what many of us are experiencing right now.
In this time of stillness, following the Winter Solstice, remember that retrograde periods — although disorienting — help build awareness. And awareness is always an essential ingredient for change.
Support Is Available
If you need support navigating this energetic transition into 2026, I am here for you.
Your value is not tied to your productivity.
Your worth is not defined by what society says you can give.
It is rooted in who you are — deep down inside.
It’s good to see you here.