In the past few years, we've experienced here in Israel two major collective crises: Covid and the massacre of October 7th, followed by an endless war.
These continual events have exposed powerful mechanisms on different levels: political, social, and personal. In this article I examine the (alarmingly similar) phenomena we've witnessed in these crises, at the systemic, interpersonal, and body-mind levels: the way collective trauma affects and is affected by criticism, creating a powerful destructive vortex.
I also present the alternative offered by the Focusing way, if only we would choose to take it
Although the title speaks of collective trauma, more accurate terms for me are systemic trauma or trauma in the field or in the shared space.
This refers to an event, situation or period of anxiety that affects a large group of people. It can touch all individuals directly (like Covid) or be dramatic like the events of October 7th and touch deep intergenerational anxieties regarding pogrom and massacre.
Anxiety Seeks Logic
A few years ago, I facilitated a Family Constellation representatives’ session.
In that session, one of the newcomers represented Anxiety. She didn't really understand what that meant (nobody does, actually), but gave expression to what had arisen in her. Every time I turned to her and asked – "how are you? What's happening with you now?" She answered – "I'm trying to understand what's happening here". Indeed, she perfectly represented Anxiety.
The attempt to understand what's happening here, to make order in chaos through logic is an inseparable part of the anxiety mechanism.
What distinguishes humans from animals is our cognitive ability to process information – in most areas of life this is often a central tool that guides our way.
Certainty and clarity are existential needs for the human mind. Therefore, the unknown is often a trigger for us.
Anxiety is a comprehensive bodily experience of threat to life. An essential part of this experience is powerlessness, helplessness: an inability to save my life (or my loved ones). Our body, like the body of a gazelle facing a tiger, reacts: it wants to flee or fight. When neither is an option – we freeze.
Just like the gazelle, when our body is anxious, our survival mechanism is running the show and not the developed, cognitive part of our brain. The activated parts of our brain are those ancient, animalistic, language-less parts that seek to protect us from that danger of death by doing. Anxiety doesn't understand words or logic at all.
In some cases, the cognitive part is neutralized, and any attempt to tell anxiety, or an anxious person: "there's nothing to fear", won't be registered in the body. In fact, since the arousal of anxiety is from the body's point of view the way to save our lives, verbal attempts to calm it will often be experienced as very dangerous attempts to banish the alertness, to collapse the guard, meaning – there is much to be afraid of.
A Piece of Information to Call "Truth"
But our cognition does not rest; as anxiety rises and the blood rushes through our veins it also works in full power and tries to save us, in the cognitive way: to understand, to find clarity, to gather knowledge and use logic in order to guide us out of danger.
And so we are in a whirlwind: anxiety floods the body, the unknown is unbearable, and our thoughts, desperate, search for an anchor of information that will help it make order in chaos, to shield against death. When it finds a piece of information that feels solid enough, it clings to it, needs to believe it and call it "truth".
For our anxious cognitive part "truth" is calming. It is absolute, it's a coherent narrative to rely on. And "truth" creates binaries: we know who is right and who is wrong, who are the good guys and who are evil, and whatever or whoever supports the good is also good, and vice versa.
During Covid some people held to the truth saying the pandemic kills, and the vaccine will save us. Therefore, whoever thought differently were marked as dangerous, blamed of spreading fake news and even called at some points "murderers
For our anxious cognitive part "truth" is calming. It is absolute, it's a coherent narrative to rely on. And "truth" creates binaries: we know who is right and who is wrong, who are the good guys and who are evil
The Other is the Tiger
I've written before about the vortex of criticism and trauma, and its manifestations in interaction, in systems we are part of. The effects of this vortex are very relevant to our matter.
Let's say my body detects mortal danger; it can be an enemy who massacred my people, my brothers and sisters, or a threat of death by disease.
In the absence of a real possibility to fight the real danger or flee from it, criticism appears. The raging anxiety that has found the "truth" turns against the agents of danger: other people, those who are different from me, or think differently: do not accept my "truth". The deadly threat is now the person who doesn't want to get vaccinated, or the one protesting the war or expresses compassion for Gaza suffering civilians.
And the other way around: when we hold the opposite "truth", people who support the government policy to continue the war or seeing all Gaza residents as the enemy are a threat to my very being as an Israeli, as a human.
We experience each other as a threat, as danger, as the tiger.
We are divided into groups each holding on to its "truth".
In the absence of a real possibility to fight the real danger or flee from it, criticism appears. The raging anxiety that has found the "truth" turns against the agents of danger: other people, those who are different from me
We Can't Convince Death Fear
The cognitive mechanism is intriguing: sometimes our cognition tries to solve the problem. It tells itself: wait, this isn't really a tiger, it's a rational person, I'll try to explain to them why they should share my fear and adopt the path my cognition has marked as salvation. I'll share with them my knowledge and evidence, my "truth". I'll convince them with the logic of my fear, show them the wrongfulness of their own fear. They will understand, join me and stop endangering me. Thus, I won't be helpless, thus I'll be saved from death.
But the person facing us is also anxious, and as we've established, anxiety can't be addressed with words. We can't convince death fear.
This is so frustrating, not being able to defeat the death threat by using knowledge and logic. Our fear and our helplessness increase.
And so does criticism, which is made of the exact same materials that trauma is made of: fear and helplessness.
At first, criticism will be calling other people stupid, blind and ignorant. Maybe this is still a weak attempt by cognition to explain: their cognitive ability is lacking, that's why they don't understand.
But soon cognition shifts to work in service of criticism: If logic says that a human would have been convinced by my "truth" – apparently the unconvinced aren't human beings.
At this stage criticism escalates and becomes dehumanization: they are heartless or crazy or brainwashed. They lack what makes a person human: emotion and reason. Next criticism will also call them murderers (or disease spreaders, or Nazis). The next stage is truly frightening – transition from words to actions.
The Tragedy of Criticism
This process occurs across the whole traumatized field. Each group finds "truth" to cling to, tries to convince the opposite side, fails and attacks. Even within groups that allegedly share the same agenda, criticism finds its way toward people who are more or less radical than others. The vortex goes deeper.
And the vortex goes wider. When it comes to major traumatic events criticism goes beyond the immediate victims, sucking in witnesses and bystanders as well. The whole world is touched by the images and testimonials coming from Israel-Gaza battlefield; all around the world people are carrying in their bodies the memories of cruelty, demolition, murder, rape and starvation from previous generations. So, they are sucked into the vortex, choose sides, and criticize and dehumanize the opposite side.
And this should be noted: criticism is experienced in our body-mind as violence, as a death threat by its own, and continues the vortex movement of trauma.
And this is the tragedy of criticism: its purpose is to save us, to change things, but criticism can't save anyone, can't change anything. What does it do? Arouses more criticism, grows deeper, wider, stronger. The vortex movement accelerates, escalates, floods the space and sweeps up everyone in it. It only drives people apart even from family and friends, polarizes communities, creates another deeper battlefield.
This is my statement: nothing good grows from criticism: not salvation, not revival, not health, not security. Not on the personal level – we're all shattered; and since the collective is made up of us – not on the collective level either.
Nothing good grows from criticism: not salvation, not revival, not health, not security
The Focusing Way
But despite feeling deep despair right now about the current situation, I still want to offer a hopeful perspective, that of the Focusing way.
Focusing suggests that there is no one truth and invites us to remain curious and open to what we don't know. To hold intricacy, to contain multitudes: the fear from the virus is legitimate, and so is the fear from the vaccine, since we don't know enough about either of them. The loss and suffering are real, both in Israel and in Gaza.
I wish we all can acknowledge that we are all human beings, individuals, frightened, traumatized, wishing to live and prosper. And then – to avoid determining anything about people on the opposite side; anything we say from our frightened traumatized parts will be criticism.
Instead – let's talk about ourselves. Let's express our fears and hopes, let's express our feelings, thoughts, beliefs in a way that leaves space for other fears, hopes, thoughts and beliefs. Let's hold the bigger picture and remember it has several sides and points of view, all parts of the system
And then we can not only speak differently, but also listen. We can respond differently to one another, say: yes, this is really scary, really devastating. Say – this action you take, you feel it might save you, reduce your helplessness in this frightening situation.
This kind of interaction is based on empathy, and empathy allows both points of view to exist, unlike criticism. And unlike criticism which kills, empathy heals.
