Today, as my heart came back online and my tears began to flow, relief also washed over me. I’d felt numb in the prior days while reading of starving Palestinians civilians. I couldn’t find the grief I knew was in me somewhere. But this morning, when I imagined myself cradling the fragile body of a dying emaciated Palestinian child, the distance collapsed and my heart broke open—clean pain sweeping through me.
Though I’d felt shame about my numbness, I knew it was trauma’s freeze reaction. Our nervous systems are designed to shut down in response to overwhelming pain. Also, freezing is nature’s protective stillness, enabling animals to avoid detection by predators. If you’re feeling numb when facing the world’s tragedies, know that this is normal.
But aggressors strategically employ overwhelm to numb bystanders into inaction. Especially when we believe there’s nothing we can do, numbness protects us from the helpless despair we’d feel witnessing cruelty. And dominating systems work to amplify our frozen trauma reaction, because they rely on us staying numb and apathetic.
One way I counter this in my own life is to slow down while reading the news. By stopping myself from quickly scrolling through the horrors, intellectually taking them in without feeling, I am thawing my heart. This man-made famine had been predicted, so my mind understood its likelihood, but the images of skeletal children still left me in shock. I reminded myself that shock is a normal stage of grief and that I needed to stay open to allow the rest of my sorrow to arise.
The importance of thawing our frozen emotions reminds me of this story—not sure if it’s true or of its attribution, but it is true in spirit:
A man stood outside the White House with a single protest candle every night during the Vietnam War.
A reporter came to him one night and said, “Sir, do you really believe your little protest will change anything?”
And he said, “Oh, I don’t come here to change them. I come here so they don’t change me. I will do my small part every day to stay human, to stay awake and tender, so that the world does not wear away my humanity.”
As the annihilation impulses in our societies surge, it’s crucial that our hearts stay online. By working to stay connected emotionally—feeling sorrow, anger, courage, fear, dignity and compassion—we build our capacity to remain attentive and engaged, so we can continue to stand up together against injustice.
photo credit: Gretta Vosper
