Global events, particularly those marked by conflict and crisis, profoundly impact us, whoever and wherever we are. The mental health repercussions of living through such times are significant, affecting not only those directly involved but also those indirectly connected to the crisis. In the context of heightened regional tension, it is crucial to acknowledge the diverse range of emotions and challenges faced by individuals with bipolar disorder and other mental health diagnoses.

Witnessing a crisis unfold triggers a spectrum of responses, each person navigating their unique emotional landscape. Feelings of grief, depression, fear, anxiety, and guilt are common, whether one has direct ties to the conflict or is simply an observer. The trauma of living through a global crisis can compound other forms of trauma, such as intergenerational, historical, or racial trauma, amplifying the complexity of emotional experiences.

In the digital age, where information is disseminated rapidly, it becomes challenging to escape the constant stream of images, videos, and news coverage during global tension. While valuable for connection, social media platforms can also expose individuals to misinformation, hostile arguments, and unexpected graphic content. Navigating this information overload becomes crucial for maintaining mental well-being.

In the face of unprecedented challenges, the value of self-care for resilience becomes more evident than ever. The concept of self-care emerges as a lifeline, offering a means to find equilibrium amid chaos. This blog post explores practical self-care strategies specifically tailored to individuals with bipolar disorder and other mental health diagnoses and those supporting them.

#1 Practice Self-Compassion
Begin by checking in with yourself as you would with a friend. Embrace and acknowledge your feelings, recognizing that each emotion is temporary, no matter how intense. Extend kindness to yourself, nurturing your inner strength and resilience. Treating yourself with the same compassion you offer a friend makes you better equipped to support others. Recognizing our shared humanity in these challenging times fosters a sense of connection and understanding.

#2 Stay in the Present
In moments of overwhelming emotions, focus on the present and your immediate surroundings. Embrace the analogy of emotions as waves—rising, peaking, and gradually receding. Rather than resisting or succumbing to emotions, practice riding them. Ground yourself by engaging your five senses, fostering a connection with the present moment.

#3 Separate What You Can and CanNot Control
Uncertainty often breeds anxiety, as the mind craves certainty and safety. Acknowledge the intangibility of specific circumstances and redirect mental energy toward what lies within your control. Address worries individually, discerning their controllability and approaching each concern effectively. This shift in focus aids in managing concerns without being overwhelmed by an uncertain future.

#4 Notice and Manage Your Worried Thoughts
During stress, the brain's natural response heightens awareness of potential risks, triggering the "fight or flight" reaction. Identifying worrisome thoughts and redirecting focus toward constructive alternatives can alleviate this stress response. Creating a designated "worry period," articulating worries, examining the facts, and formulating rational thoughts contribute to a more balanced perspective.

#5 Create Boundaries to Protect Your Peace
Consider boundaries around protecting your time, conversations, and personal space. Reflect on meaningful activities that help you rest and recharge, identify communication limits, and create a self-care space in your living environment.

#6 Pay Attention to Joy
Acknowledging positive moments during heightened stress can be challenging, yet focusing on joy and gratitude practices can uplift your mood. Incorporate the "5-3-1 Practice" into your daily routine, dedicating 5 minutes to meditation, expressing gratitude to 3 things, and performing 1 act of kindness.

In today's demanding and unpredictable world, prioritizing self-care is not a luxury but a vital necessity. As mental health advocates, acknowledging the interconnectedness of our well-being allows us to navigate life's challenges with strength and grace. Small, consistent efforts toward self-care yield significant benefits, fostering a nurturing and balanced environment for ourselves and our loved ones. In practicing self-compassion, we embark on a journey toward increased resilience, improved mental and physical health, and a more fulfilling life. Together, let us commit to integrating self-care into our daily routines, recognizing its transformative power in navigating turbulent times.

Some wounds heal in plain sight. But no one can see the scars from years of abuse, bullying, abandonment, wars, car bombs, and explosions.

Trauma is a situation we all know too well. 

Yet, it is a complex and evolving concept. In the realm of American psychiatric diagnosis, it's presently defined by the DSM-5 as an experience involving "actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence," whether as a victim or witness.

The term 'trauma' is multifaceted. It can denote a physical injury, an experience, or an emotional response to a harrowing event. Its origins trace back to the Greek word "wound," a term still used in the context of physical injury in medical settings. The notion of trauma as psychological damage only surfaced in the late 1880s.

In 1889, French psychologist Pierre Janet published "L’automatisme psychologique," marking the first scientific account of traumatic stress. This work would later be mentioned in Sigmund Freud's 1893 paper on hysteria, laying the foundation for the study of trauma.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was officially recognized in veterans and disaster responders, including those who encountered the tragic Jonestown Massacre in 1978. It was added to the DSM-III in 1980. Over the subsequent 14 years, revisions to the DSM shifted the focus from the objective severity of an event to the patient's level of distress. The disorder's definition also expanded to include not only those who experienced trauma but also those who witnessed it or heard about it.

By the 1990s, terms such as "cultural trauma," "collective trauma," "historical trauma," and "intergenerational trauma" began to emerge, often in the context of atrocities like genocide, enslavement, and war.

Trauma wields a profound influence over our lives. Beyond its immediate physical and emotional impacts, it can fundamentally shape our self-perception and worldview.

But here's a crucial truth: Trauma does not define you. You are not your trauma.

Broken things do not need to remain broken. Our brain is wired for change; that change does not have to be negative. So we can create positive change despite terrible events like explosions, collapsing economies, and pandemics. It is called post-traumatic growth.

Brokenness can be a starting point of beauty.

The experiences that hurt and caused you pain don’t have the power to define you. They may have altered you, transformed you, but they don't hold the ability to label your beautiful, brilliant soul, which harbors a universe as vast as the starry expanse in the night sky.

What defines you is your resilience and capacity to endure even the most excruciating experiences and emerge stronger. You possess the courage many only dream of—a determination to grow wings when life attempts to take yours away. You are made of remarkable, extraordinary, and unimaginable qualities, and your trauma cannot deceive you into believing it's the only aspect of your identity that matters.

The person you were before the storms of life arrived may be gone, but remnants of them remain. Your past and wounds have sculpted a new you—a more resilient, courageous, and improved version.

You are whole, a stronger and braver version of yourself in every conceivable way. Perhaps, deep down, we're not as fragile as we think.

As we change, we learn. In moments of adversity, we find growth opportunities. When we set out to heal our own lives, we discover newfound resilience, equipping us to mend our personal challenges and the world's. 

With this journey, we grow wise and whole. We become stronger not only for ourselves but for those around us. We strip away the layers of pretense, creating connections that are more authentic than ever before. We mend the brokenness with compassion and extend kindness to others and ourselves.

We can turn our brokenness into beauty and growth.

We are not our traumas.

​The past few weeks have not been kind to us. It seems almost impossible to turn on the news or scroll through social media without encountering a disturbing image. 

In Lebanon, we recognize the sounds of the war. We know the sound of a jet or a missile because we learned to recognize them, and we know how to cope.

Over the past four decades, Lebanon has weathered a 15-year civil war, an Israeli occupation in the south, the July 2006 war with Israel, a series of bombings and assassinations, the more recent Beirut blast, and an ongoing economic crisis. As revealed by a recent study, these relentless challenges have left millions of Lebanese at a heightened risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, in a region marked by persistent instability, there's rarely a "post" to the trauma; the specter of war remains ever-present.

When conflict erupts in neighboring regions, fear permeates Lebanon. The silent knowledge of impending war hangs in the air, palpable to all. The atmosphere is charged with tension, and the collective anxiety is undeniable. It's a fear that lingers, impacting daily life and mental well-being.

I wake up terrified that something significant happened while I was sleeping. When I wake up, I first get to my phone to check the news. Freedom and safety are sacred, something often taken for granted in more stable regions.

The word "trauma," tracing its origins to the Greek language, is inherently linked to the concept of a "wound." Whether consciously acknowledged or not, our experiences of being wounded and the coping mechanisms we employ play a significant role in shaping our behavior, influencing our social interactions, and guiding our perspectives on the world. These experiences can even impact our capacity for rational thinking in matters of utmost significance.

By this definition, trauma is the internal response that individuals undergo due to challenging or painful life events; it is distinct from the events themselves. Gabor Mate succinctly formulates this concept by stating, “Trauma is not about what happens to you but rather about what transpires within you.”

I lay awake wondering: In war, do our minds find peace?

In times of impending conflict, we have a choice in how we respond. We can freeze in fear or choose to grow despite the uncertainty. Many choose the latter, driven by a sense of responsibility and the desire to improve their well-being and support others. The resilience of the human spirit shines through the darkest moments.

Amid impending war, the battle within rages on. It's a silent struggle that takes its toll on mental health. Yet, the resilience of the human spirit, the power of choice, and the pursuit of growth offer hope in the darkness. Strength is cultivated through facing adversity head-on and emerging stronger on the other side.

No one can plot somebody else’s healing course because that’s not how healing works. There are no predefined road maps for the unique journey each of us must take. We can, however, outline the terrain, describe it, become familiar with it, and ready ourselves to meet its challenges. Through this process, we can learn the inherent principles that guide the path to healing and identify the attitudes and qualities it awakens and responds to within us.

As we navigate these turbulent times, we must recognize the strength and resilience that can emerge from within. We can't control external circumstances, but we can choose how we respond and support one another in the ongoing battle for peace within.

It is difficult for many to maintain a healthy mental space in any given year, but the last three years have tested many more than they can bear. I know it feels nearly impossible to secure mental health in an unhealthy world. 

Protests, riots, economic collapse, pandemics, explosions, wars, bans, ethnic cleansing, executions, and political vacuum, normal ceased to exist. Everything is new and uncomfortable, and we get horrifying updates daily. Yet, amid completely unprecedented times, people worldwide were and still are trying to find hope.

It does not lie within any of us to be entirely sane.

Maybe bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety are healthy responses to an unhealthy world. Perhaps, people and their minds aren’t the problems – maybe it’s a normal, healthy response to an unhealthy situation.

I watched and engaged as humanity unfolded before my eyes. The only downside is that humanity doesn’t just mean love, kindness, and compassion. Sometimes humans can be cruel and selfish, and dangerous. 

I stare at the perpetual parade of horrible scrolling past me, from the second I wake up prematurely in the early morning until the stretched-out nighttime moments I try unsuccessfully to fall asleep—and how I question my grip on reality.

I know the disbelief I feel in the presence of loved ones, friends, and leaders who now seem to be speaking some strange foreign tongue that I can’t make any sense of. I hear the nagging question I ask inside my head a few hundred times a day: “Is it me, or has a huge portion of the world lost its mind?”

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the world, and all that goes on top of it, crushes my spirit and body most days. I have turned off the news in a superficial attempt to reduce anxiety. But ignoring the world does not provide an escape from the knowledge that we live in a broken world where some people can just “turn off the news” and maintain peace while others wake daily to utterly desperate circumstances. 

The human experience constantly undulates between good and evil, new and old, pretty and ugly. So the question I have been asking myself over the last three years isn’t how do we stop this? Or how do we maintain normalcy? Instead, I have been asking myself, how do I (we) navigate these ever-changing waters? 

I have only come up with a simple answer: Stop trying to figure it out. 

We must learn to set ourselves up to be healthy in a world where being unhealthy is the easier choice. 

#1 Practice having grace on yourself daily. 
Be gentle with yourself when everything feels overwhelming. Do your best to feel what you feel when feeling it because there is no step-by-step guidebook. No one knows how to feel right now. No one knows what to do. No one knows what’s going to happen next. 

#2 Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 
If you haven’t already, that’s okay. We are still in a global pandemic, fighting injustice, and we all still have so much going on. Acknowledge that there is time to grow and do your best to give yourself the space to do so. It may not be easy, but hopefully, it is worth it. 

#3 Learn to amplify awareness. 
Become attuned to what’s going on inside you and around you. We live in a culture filled with distractions, but it’s helpful to be aware of what triggers and excites you. For example, what situations make you want to stress eat? Or when you have a better-than-average day, what conditions led to that? You can then take action based on what you’re noticing.

#4 Preemptively repair. 
Get ahead of the damage that’s done to you just by living in an unhealthy culture. This could include eating healthy food before you’re ravenous or taking a break before feeling frazzled. If you do these things before they become critical, you’ll have more available energy and resilience.

#5 Invest in continuous growth and learning. 
Acknowledge that being healthy in an unhealthy world requires skill and a particular knowledge base. So strive to learn about healthy living, search for things that might help you, and experiment to uncover what works best for you.

Tomorrow will bring hope and despair. All we can do is ride the wave.

This, too, shall pass.

Courage is not fearlessness. 

Courage is taking action despite the fear you feel. Courage is the willingness to respond fearlessly despite the anxiety and worry that might be tugging at you.

I have always been drawn to courageous lives, people who stand up to injustice, speak truth to power, take risks, and feel joy in living boldly. But, quite often, these bolder lives are not filled with flash and dazzle but are instead of a quieter nature, marked by a humble determination to make the most of the gifts life gives us. 

What is courage, then?

The Stoics believed that courage was a virtue – a marker of moral excellence. More specifically, it was the virtue that moderated our instincts toward recklessness on one hand and cowardice on the other.

They believed the courageous person feared only things that were worthy of fear. Courage means knowing what to fear and responding appropriately to that fear. For them, what matters isn’t just whether you face your fears but why you face them and what you fear.

If we look at the word’s derivation from the Latin cor (the root of coeur in French and cuore in Italian), meaning “heart.” How does one act from one’s heart? To live from one’s heart? This is not some soft, New Age metaphor for doing whatever we want, what pleases us most. On the contrary, I believe that the word’s root reveals that when we act courageously, we respond to our deepest selves, often unknown until the moment of being tested.

The defining core of courage is love. Without love, courage is not possible. Acts of bravado, yes—but true courage is the natural outgrowth of our love of all that we hold dear, the preciousness of each human life, and a deep belief that what we love matters. Without love, there is nothing at stake, nothing to fight for.

In trying to live more courageously, I practice understanding what courage is and training myself to perform small, daily acts of bravery.

#1 Courage means being afraid and acting anyway. 
If you tend to be fearful, you probably assume you’re not courageous. However, fear is a universal emotion, and we all know how terrible terror feels. Thus, we should grasp that feeling afraid and acting in any way is a form of nobility.

#2 Courage is a habit, a muscle you can exercise. 
Most of us aren’t born courageous, so we shouldn’t expect to acquire it magically without practice. Get in the habit of deciding what you think about things and speaking from that place of conviction. Practice saying what you think about small, inconsequential things: pleasantly, politely—but firmly.

#3 Notice every time you do something that you’re scared to do—something your body is telling you not to do. 
You’ll start to realize that you do these things all the time. So you’re already much braver than you think. This is particularly true of shy people for whom daily life requires them to smile in the face of fear. 

#4 Dare to let go of things.
There are some battles we wage on a more frequent base. For example, how far do you let your boss push you around before you stand up for yourself? How much do you let your money or status control your actions instead of living the life you want to live? And how much do you worry about your possessions being stolen from you or losing your loved ones? Learn to let go of the fear of losing things. Impermanence permeates life. Embrace that.

#5 Know thyself.
We must look closer and go inward to see what we need to ask ourselves. Then we will see what possible battles we can find there. How do we know our limits and when we need to act? That starts with knowing yourself. It is time to ask ourselves a lot of questions. These are not easy questions: we must go for the most challenging questions to get to the core. And believe me, this takes a lot of courage. Because most of the time, we will find things we don’t like about ourselves. Unless we find the courage to investigate ourselves, we can’t grow. 

#6 Welcome failure.
Most people fear failure, which often keeps them stagnating or stuck in the same place. The fear of failure can lead people to develop rigid standards and become perfectionistic in an effort not to experience the embarrassment or shame that comes with failure. But failure is an experience that we should embrace. After all, failure is an opportunity to grow as a person. It allows you to learn something new, change directions, and see what you're made of. And if viewed as a welcome experience instead of a worst-case scenario, it stretches you to try new things despite the risks involved.

We are all courageous in our ways—some of us have simply had it tested a bit more than others. Such trials are the stuff of life we would never wish for, but at the end of the tunnel, we find ourselves grateful for having passed through them. Like love, courage never goes away. It only changes form from time to time, builds on itself, evolves, expands, and enhances everything it touches.

Maybe the truth about courage is that it’s all about truth. It’s about looking reality in the face and having the force of will not to turn away, despite the pain, the unpleasantness, and the risk.

Maybe it’s about looking for long enough to see the joy in the pain, the beauty in the ugliness, and the comfort in the little risks we take every day.

Perhaps it’s only then we can know what’s worth dying for – and what’s worth living for. 

How about you?
How do you embrace courage in your life?

​Join the discussion in the community.

The bruises heal, and the marks fade, but the scars on your soul will linger for years. 

If you have a broken arm, everyone sees it and knows to be gentle with you, but what about if you have a broken heart? A broken mind? A broken soul? 

No one can see the scars from years of trauma, abuse, bullying, and abandonment. So no one will understand why they need to be gentle with you and how their actions can hurt worse than if there weren’t any invisible scars.

The symptoms are not always obvious. Sometimes they’re as subtle as unconscious choices, spontaneous decisions, imperceptible body movements, and (in)voluntary isolation. 

I’ve been in therapy since 2018, and I’m still discovering invisible scars. As my therapist gently holds space to allow me to share my story, I uncover them. 

I am learning to recognize my triggers and communicate them. 

I am learning to set and respect healthy boundaries. 

I am learning to communicate generously, candidly, and lovingly. 

I am learning to love my invisible scars. 

I am learning to love myself. 

The only way to move forward is to overcome the pain and find peace within me. Only then will I be able to live a healthy life and love the scars from the past.

Healing is not a linear process. 

There will be good days. There will be bad days. There will be days when you catch glimpses of hope. There will be days that you don’t feel a fucking thing. It’s easy to slip into hopelessness; healing is hard work. 

Some scars go back 30+ years, and I’ve only begun processing them.

For some time, it just felt simpler to numb the pain. As a result, I abused substances that deprived me of a fair shot at healing. It felt so much better to drown my emotions and memories using various substances in the short term. However, I can testify that this can only offer a sense of temporary relief: it doesn’t fix anything. Engaging in substance abuse is a dangerous game, and, from personal experience, I strongly advise against it. The pain you feel will only be exacerbated in the long term. 

At other times, I just put up a brave front. I thought if I acted like I was okay, then I would feel okay. It turns out that bottling your emotions is not the answer. Pretending that I didn’t care or as if it was not affecting me didn’t get me anywhere in my healing process. I needed to ask for help and to confide in someone who could help me process. 

There is no clear-cut way to heal invisible wounds. It takes time, therapy, self-compassion, more processing than I care to count, and the ability to rely on a support system. 

Everyone heals at their own pace and through their methods, though there may be times we may need to seek outside help to let go.

We all have scars on our bodies and our hearts. But we don’t have to tell the stories of our scars as evidence of our wounds—but we can see them as proof of our healing journey.

And it certainly doesn't mean I have to wait to be "fully healed" before going after the people and pursuits I want in my life.

Taking action before I feel "healed enough" can be healing.

Because moving toward the things that I want – those people, places, and pursuits that would fill my life with meaning and fulfillment – and specifically, moving towards those things before I feel ready can accelerate my healing journey. It will boost my sense of agency, and competency, and support the reclamation and healing of my self-esteem and self-worth.

Reparative experiences can help rewire our maladaptive beliefs and behaviors about ourselves, others, and the world in a way that theory, imagination, or positive wishful thinking simply can’t compete with in terms of effectiveness.

Challenging your critical self-talk with kinder, more supportive self-talk is one thing. However, it’s another thing entirely to prove to yourself through your lived experiences that those kinder, more supportive self-statements are, in fact, true.

Some questions I invite you to explore with me:

• What am I craving and dreaming about that I’m not currently moving towards?
• What beliefs do I have about my capacity to do that?
• Are these beliefs helpful or harmful?
• Do these beliefs feel like voices and ideas from my past (like a familiar voice from someone close to me), or are they coming from my body, from some bone-deep wisdom and inner knowing inside of me?
• What do I imagine might happen if I begin to take action toward what I want?
• What’s the worst-case scenario, and what’s the best-case plan?
• Do I know anyone else who “started before they were ready” and has happy outcomes I’d like for myself?
• What would it take for me to emulate them? Would I like to do this?

I took this picture on August 4, 2020, at 5:48 PM, minutes before the Beirut port explosion shattered my city. 

As I felt the wave of the blast engulfing us and saw the mushroom cloud rising, I thought everyone I knew had died in a split second. So I grabbed my phone and started making calls and sending texts. Within minutes, groups had mobilized to begin providing support. 

Two years later, as I returned to this summer home, I felt uneasy looking at that same view. 

The invisible wounds are still fresh, 23 months later.

Trauma is a situation we all know too well. 

I won’t count the number of times we narrowly escaped a car bomb and how we perniciously managed to normalize the panic and anxiety we feel when such moments happen. 

In 2005, I was having lunch with my father when the Hariri explosion shattered the restaurant's glass windows. 

A friend said to me the next day, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Effectively taking away my right to sit with the pain, process my trauma and overcome the anxieties that ensued from that event. 

It took me 15 years to process that traumatic event in therapy. 

In her book ‘Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Judith Herman (1992, p.33) provided this definition.

“Psychological trauma is an affiliation of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning. […]

Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life. Unlike commonplace misfortunes, traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity or a close personal encounter with violence and death. They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror and evoke the responses of catastrophe.”

The Beirut port explosion shattered my home, city, and community. Yet, we came together to mourn our losses and mend our wounds while invisible scars formed underneath the surface. 

“You are such a resilient nation. You will bounce back”, said the international community. 

“Stop calling us resilient,” shouted back those on the ground. The compounded crises have taken a toll on the country’s mental health.

For many, the explosion was the final straw. As soon as they cleaned up the broken glass and secured their homes, they packed up their bags, grabbed their families, and emigrated to “safer” shores. 

But for the majority, leaving was not an option. Those who remained were not resilient, and they were, they are resisting. 

If you’ve had the misfortune of experiencing trauma, you’ll know that it feels like life will never be the same again. However, there is growing research that humans cannot only “bounce back” from trauma but yield a joyous life on the other side of a traumatic experience. We can refer to this as post-traumatic growth, defined as positive psychological change experienced due to adversity and other challenges to rise to a higher level of functioning.

Post-traumatic growth is not the same as resilience. Resilience is the ability to move on with life and persevere. Post-traumatic growth is more than surviving; it describes how human beings can be changed by painful encounters, sometimes in radically positive ways.

Post-traumatic growth is above and beyond resilience.

I’ll say that again.

Post-traumatic growth is above and beyond resilience.

Those who experience post-traumatic growth may find a greater appreciation for life and learn to enjoy small things such as a child’s smile or enjoying a day with minimal pain. Others note closer, more intimate, and meaningful relationships as a result of experiencing greater empathy and compassion for themselves and those they do life with. Finally, others report waking up to new possibilities in life. They no longer take life for granted and are awakened to the reality that they can make unique and significant choices; they can choose to go in a radically different direction, change careers, and let go of unhealthy relationships. Many report an increased recognition of their strength. They learn not to sweat the small stuff. Things that would have been stressful in the past are more likely to roll off their backs.

The key to experiencing post-traumatic growth is learning to sit with one’s pain. Post-traumatic stress disorder, at its core, is an avoidance disorder. Understandably, those with PTSD try to avoid the traumatic thoughts, images, and feelings in any way they can. This is why those who suffer repeated trauma are much more likely to suffer from addiction. Addiction makes it impossible to sit with one’s pain.

Therefore, the first thing that trauma-informed counselors do is help a person widen their window of pain tolerance, often through mindfulness or breathing exercises. Once a person can sit with their pain, even if for brief amounts of time in the presence of a safe person, they may be able to experience the substantial cognitive and emotional shifts that make post-traumatic growth more likely.

We shouldn’t glorify pain. It is not always possible for those who have been traumatized to bring something good out of their misery. We need to fight against injustices and inequalities. We must remember that trauma doesn’t always result in post-traumatic growth.

The world has changed dramatically in the last two years and challenged many of us beyond our expectations. As a result, the cracks of stress, strain, and trauma are increasing in our lives, work, and relationships.

Some cracks are on the outside—physical changes and work resume gaps, abandoned plans, and hastily executed alternatives. Some are on the inside—disappointments and regrets, grief over what was lost, and self-doubt from failures. And that fatigue that feels like more than fatigue.

We may want to return to some aspects of the pre-2019 "normal." And we dread returning to other old patterns and ways of work and life. So one minute, we might be searching for the "old me," and next, we are wondering about the “new me.”

But there is no going back. The "old normal" no longer exists. And to be honest, do you even recognize that person in the mirror?

We are not the same. And accepting that might be the start of healing and growth.

Some things in our lives are fractured or chipped—perhaps our confidence or motivation? Perhaps our trust in the world? 

But broken things do not need to remain broken. Our brain is wired for change; that change does not have to be negative. So we can create positive change despite terrible events like explosions, collapsing economies, and pandemics. It is called post-traumatic growth.

Brokenness can be a starting point of beauty.

We can create something better and more robust than the old normal or the old "us."

When we change, we learn. When we struggle, we grow. When we repair our lives, we gain new strength and the ability to mend the aspects of our lives and our world that need to be fixed.

We gain wisdom and beauty and emerge stronger than before. We restore ourselves and advocate for others. We shed the layers of pretense and create a new kind of social bond, perhaps remote—yet more authentic than ever. We repair the brokenness with caring and kindness toward others and ourselves.

We can turn our brokenness into beauty and growth.

Some of the most beautiful people we know are persons who have suffered excruciating pain and come out on the other side with soft hearts and beautiful spirits. They have metabolized their pain well. They sit with it and learn to grow. 

What happens in the body and mind of people who have experienced trauma? And why is it so difficult to find relief from it?

In this book, you’ll learn why traumatic experiences haunt us. Then, you’ll understand how trauma patients perceive their environment. Finally, you’ll know why there’s hope for traumatized people and how trauma can be healed.

Trauma isn’t just something faced by war veterans - it’s far more prevalent in our society than we realize. The truth is that trauma can happen to anyone, and it’s time we found out what this means.

Traumas result from an experience of extreme stress or pain that leaves an individual feeling helpless or too overwhelmed to cope with adversity. For example, war incidents typically result in traumas, but violent crimes and accidents cause them. 

Traumatized people often have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), leading to depression and substance abuse. In addition, traumatized people tend to mistrust anyone who hasn’t experienced the same suffering and assume that nobody can understand them. 

Establishing a rapport with someone suffering from PTSD is a challenge, so just imagine trying to maintain a marriage, a close friendship, or a stable parent-child relationship. Unfortunately, traumatized people find it difficult to trust even those who love them most, including partners and kids. It can be very tough on friends and families, often leading to estrangement or divorce. 

When someone who has PTSD remembers their trauma, their body and brain enter a high-stress mode since they experience the memory as if it were real. This is called a flashback, an impact of trauma that the author studied in an experiment he carried out with his patients. It turns out that being reminded of trauma can be almost as horrifying as experiencing the traumatic situation itself.

Traumatic experiences are hard enough to deal with as an adult, but there is nothing more complicated than facing trauma as a young child. With brains that aren’t fully developed, children who undergo trauma are at greater risk of experiencing many negative consequences. These consequences surface in the years immediately following their experiences and later in adulthood. Traumatized children often expect bad things to happen. These thinking patterns often persist into adulthood. 

In general, we don’t tend to memorize the sensory details of events. Most of us remember what we did or how we felt in general but don’t store vivid memories about the room's smell or the exact details of someone’s face. But it’s a different story about traumatic memories - we remember these situations vividly, and the memories don’t change over time. Trauma stays with you, both in your body and your brain. So how do people learn to live with it?

One technique that works well is known as EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It involves only a finger moving back and forth across a patient’s field of vision. While the patient follows the finder with their eyes, they’re guided through a traumatic memory and encouraged to make new associations. It helps patients by integrating traumatic memories. Once a memory is integrated, it can finally become another past event in a patient's life and cease having a troubling life. 

Our body and mind share a close relationship. To live a balanced, stable life, we need to understand how our emotions work and how they impact our bodies. Unfortunately, trauma can make this very difficult. 

Trauma often leaves people with a hypersensitive alarm system in their bodies. Those who suffered sexual abuse as children, for example, find that they experience crippling panic in harmless situations, such as cuddling with their partner. 

To avoid this, traumatized people often attempt to numb their feelings by drinking too much, taking drugs, and even overloading themselves with work. These provide a temporary solution but do more damage than good to a person’s mental health. Thankfully, yoga is a healthy way to cope with overwhelming emotions after trauma.

For trauma sufferers, yoga offers a safe way to get in touch with their emotions and understand how the body experiences them. Additionally, mindfulness is about maintaining a conscious awareness of your body and feelings rather than denying them. It is especially tough after trauma, as painful memories cause us to repress our emotions rather than address them. 

None of us like to feel sad, angry, or broken, mainly when memories of trauma trigger these feelings. But by pushing these feelings away, you also lose the opportunity to confront your trauma and start the healing process. 

Mindfulness can alleviate trauma's psychological and physiological impacts, from depression to stress to psychosomatic conditions like chronic pain. It can also improve immune responses activate regions of the brain that help regulate emotions and balance out stress hormone levels. 

Aside from mindfulness, supportive personal relationships are indispensable on the road to recovery from trauma. By building a network of family members, friends, and mental health professionals, patients can ensure they always have someone to turn to when they need help. 

Although trauma can happen to anyone, not many know how traumatic experiences impact our mental and physical health, even decades after the event. Mindfulness, support networks, eMDR, yoga, and new techniques like neurofeedback are essential tools for trauma sufferers to learn to accept, cope, and recover from their trauma. 

This Thursday, February 4th, will mark the 6th month anniversary of the Beirut Blast. For thousands, time stood still on this fateful day. For thousands, it is still August 4th at 6:07.
 
In Lebanon, we recognize the sounds of war. We can tell if a jet is cruising high above or is a missile or a drone. We know because our parents taught us to recognize these sounds and make sense of them to better cope with them. On August 4th, though, we witnessed something different. The detonation of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate produced a massive explosion that devastated Beirut's port and all the surrounding areas. Nearly 200 people died, 6,500 were injured, and around 300,000 were displaced.

I was in the mountains when it happened. Sitting in the garden, overlooking the view towards the Beirut port, we first heard a rumbling, and the earth shook slightly. Jets, my mother said, and continued her crossword puzzle. In a split second, the mushroom cloud overtook my field of vision. I’m unsure if I first saw, heard, or felt the explosion. The house shook to its core, and I worried glass might shatter inside where my nieces played. I grabbed my phone and looked at mum. She was already calling my sister. I called my brother’s wife. No answer. I couldn’t stop looking at the fucking cloud. Was it nuclear? Was it war? Was it negligence? I turned to Twitter for answers. The timeline was filled with utter panic. Conflicting information flying about. My phone was blowing up with messages. R u ok? 4 letters to condense the panic. 4 letters because there wasn’t enough time to check on everyone we knew. 

Once again, we entered a state of collective trauma. We entered a state of shock. Some people think what has not happened in 15 years of civil war has happened in three seconds. This comes on top of the country's economic crisis, political instability, and COVID-19 pandemic and has taken a toll on the mental health of many people who feel insecure, depressed, and anxious.

In the first few days after the explosion, before we had time to process the magnitude of this ferocious incident, people had already started sweeping up glass debris and healing all kinds of wounds. Perhaps though more perniciously, no one tended to the invisible wounds caused by trauma. There was a whirlwind of efforts to start reconstruction immediately. Everyone was busy replacing glass, mending doors, painting walls, and refurbishing furniture. 

For a month, I sat in the mountains taking care of the kids while my siblings tended to our broken homes. I remember the next day after the explosion, seated under a tree with my 8-year-old niece and asking her what track we should listen to. She suggested playing the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I distracted myself from the agony by playing that song multiple times a day. I mostly sat in the hammock, trying to process what had just happened. 

In an attempt to self-medicate, I started smoking pot again. This lasted a couple of months, leading my psychiatrist to up my antipsychotics again. I needed to numb the pain and be in a secondary state to handle the surrounding environment. Perhaps even more absurdly, I wanted to be in physical and mental denial. I felt guilty that I had not been injured while others suffered immensely or lost their lives. I felt ashamed that I could shelter myself in the mountains while others were busy rebuilding their shattered homes. It was survivor’s guilt, and my psychologist assessed it to be mild and manageable. How else could we have coped?

While I initially had an unquenchable thirst for information and devoured every media, medium, and feed I could get, I soon learned that watching a tree could benefit my mental health. I eventually got my hands on the pictures of the devastation in our family home. We could have been severely injured and disfigured by the explosion. Just the image, the possibility of being there, was haunting. 

However harrowing these thoughts could be, we stoically and bravely went about our business. While the immediate scars are starting to heal, thanks to extraordinary efforts on the ground, the deep, visible, and invisible wounds in a country experiencing multiple emergencies will require sustained empathy, love, and kindness. 

When we struggle and life has pushed us into a corner, we go into survival mode and find skills and strengths we never knew we had. This allows us to grow and be more resilient in life.

Kintsugi is a centuries-old Japanese art of fixing cracked pottery. Rather than hide the cracks, the technique involves rejoining the broken pieces with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The whole pottery looks as beautiful as ever when put back together, even while owning its broken history.

I’m wondering whether we will have a second life at this time in history. When put back together, will we recover with dignity and grace? Science suggests that we will not only heal but also demonstrate the immense human capacity for resiliency and growth.

Resilience is the ability of people who have experienced a highly life-threatening or traumatic event to maintain relatively stable, healthy psychological and physical functioning levels.
In fact, many who experience trauma show incredible resilience and thrive in the aftermath of the traumatic event. 

Studies show that most trauma survivors do not develop PTSD; many even report growth from their experience. Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun coined the term “posttraumatic growth” to capture this phenomenon, defining it as the positive psychological change experienced due to the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances.

These seven areas of growth have been reported to spring from adversity:

• Greater appreciation of life
• Greater appreciation and strengthening of close relationships
• Increased compassion and altruism
• The identification of new possibilities or a purpose in life
• Greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths
• Enhanced spiritual development
• Creative growth

We tend to rely on a particular set of beliefs and assumptions about the benevolence and controllability of the world. Traumatic events typically shatter that worldview as we become shaken from our ordinary perceptions and are left to rebuild ourselves and our worlds.

As Viktor Frankl put it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Times are difficult right now, and it may seem so far away before we can become whole again. Nevertheless, the latest research on posttraumatic growth offers hope that we will become stronger, more creative, and with a more profound sense of meaning than we ever had before.

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