I’ve been struggling with both how and what to write since the brutal terrorist attacks of October 7th in Israel and the subsequent horrific ongoing war.  I’ve been looking up articles on how to cope and how to protect your mental health, but they all seem so woefully inadequate to the situation and for the depth of what I feel.  Cutting back on media time, taking a walk in nature, doing an act of kindness for someone…they all seem so superficial when addressing these events.  This experience is more than vicarious traumatization or or secondary trauma, it is trauma with a capital T.  It is personal for me and so many around the world, it is scary, and it is contagious.  So today, I have no answers, only some reflections from my experience in working with trauma.  There is no doubt, trauma begets trauma.  The pain invoked by trauma, unless carefully addressed and attended to, only leads to lashing out, reactivity, and the infliction of more pain.  It is with this in mind I share my thoughts with you about our pain and how important it is to hold it carefully.

It hurts.  The brutal attack on Israelis hurts.  The fact that over 240 people are being held hostage hurts.  The suffering of so many Palestinian people for what the terrorists did is painful.  The images of children and elderly, innocents and victims on all sides, injured and dying is painful.  The fear people live in as the bombing continues all night long is painful.  The loss of homes and communities is so painful.  The feeling of helplessness is so painful.  The spreading of misinformation and propaganda is painful.  The brutal stabbing of a 6 year old Palestinian American boy is painful.  The image of swastikas being drawn on a Jewish cemetery in Europe is painful.  The thirst and hunger and deprivation of civilians in Gaza is so painful. The media posts and spread of hatred is painful.  Going to my synagogue and seeing a police presence for security is painful.  Seeing the words “From river to the sea” projected on the walls at college campuses is painful.  There is so, so, so much pain that it feels too overwhelming.  We are not just passive witnesses to atrocity, we are also victims. 

But we are not powerless, although we may feel that way.  We do have the power to control how we respond to this pain and an opportunity to limit the spread and effects of aggression.  Every human being deserves a place to live that is safe, where they can raise their family in good health, and express their culture.  One person’s safety should not be at the expense of others.  And yet, here we have a centuries old conflict perpetuating violence and hatred, setting up another century of violence and hatred.  How we, as the rest of the world, respond to what is happening is all we can control at this time, but is the most important thing we can do of consequence.  We have the opportunity to be an example.  We have an opportunity to take a deep breath and choose our words carefully.  We have the chance to step back and increase our understanding and our compassion for all peoples.  We have a choice in how we use our pain to be in support of de-escalation and peace or in fanning the embers of burning resentments.

Holding pain is so difficult.  It’s so much easier to jump to action to discharge the pain.  We blame, we rant, we hop on bandwagons to make ourselves feel better and righteous, we tear down a poster, we lump all people together in one group called “those people.” We do so to distract from the pain and momentarily mute it. Yet, in doing so, we perpetuate the divisiveness of conflict and the infliction of pain.  Instead, we need to listen.  We need to listen to the urges inside of us and the fear underlying our behavior.  We need to listen to others and acknowledge their pain and the fear that drives them to action.  I do believe that only by being an example of how to come together under such painful circumstances can we offer any chance to be a power for good and not a perpetrator of further conflict.

The international community must hold on to the values of peace and peaceful protest, democratic values of self determination and accountability.  We must resist the pull to polarization and hold a space for negotiation and validation.  We must denounce and condemn violence and support the process of negotiation. This is a conflict of great complexity and implication.  We cannot boil it down to a slogan or a meme.

I recently returned from a trip to Romania, coming back to CA on October 8th.  I was there in search of a connection to my ancestry of roots in the Romanian Jewish community.  I was so incredibly saddened at learning the history of the death of over 400,000 Jews in Romania, second only to Germany in loss of Jewish lives.  Prior to the war there were 750,000 Jews in Romania.  Today, there are only 8,000, most of whom are elderly.  “You are looking at the last of the Jews in Romania,” our guide said as he spoke in the synagogue in Bucharest. Most Jews fortunate to avoid the death camps were able to escape, some to the US, but most to Israel.  

There is a universal human need and right for both physical safety and emotional safety.  We must be free to be who we are, feel what we do, and  think what we might.  But this freedom cannot be without responsibility and accountability, respect and tolerance.  The incredible pain we are all feeling is a good example of our profound capacity for caring and empathy.  Now we must hold onto it as we hold on to our humanity, respecting it, feeling it, and using it to guide us with wisdom and for the sake and goal of transformation to a better path toward resolution for the next generation.  As we therapists say to victims of trauma in their journey of healing, you are not responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for how you respond to it.