How everyone can begin to heal our divided community

In order to adhere to my deeply held professional convictions of providing a stable, non-judgmental, and accepting therapeutic relationship for my patients, I’ve been forced to closely attune to my feelings, examine my beliefs and manage my inevitable anxious reactions.

You see, our anxiety is a critical feature in keeping us alive. From the most subtle of cues, it conveys messages to our system to react – often before we realise it. So when faced with situations as powerful as war, our systems activate. There is no time to consider a continuum of options, acknowledge the complexities and tolerate seemingly competing narratives. When we are anxious, we reject nuance. Our brains are flooded by stress hormones, neurologically preventing access to our more sophisticated cognitive capacities. (You might even be flooded by these hormones now, reading this.)

Ironically, these are the capacities that we most need: those that enable us to discern between thoughts and emotions, to hold competing and conflicting feelings simultaneously and to fully appreciate others’ inner experiences, which honours the complexity and nuance of the situation. Essentially, the capacities that enable understanding, compassion and humanity.

In times like this, our instinctual fear leads us to binary thinking, creating a devolving feedback loop of primal reactivity. It’s our reflexive attempt to distil the breadth of information and stimuli in our environment and to integrate it in a time-efficient way. Good or evil. With us or against us. Same or other. And these reductive binary thought tendencies fuel our ever-present emotions and influence every action we take. The further we dig, we find that our intergenerational traumas beget intergenerational emotions such as existential fear, powerlessness and hopelessness.

Most of us like to think of ourselves as good, upstanding people. But there’s a universality of emotion that manifests differently in all of us. Many times, we can perceive other people’s expressions as a threat to our sense of self. When we feel threatened, we’re protecting something rooted in an emotion and, at times, central to our own survival. But if we can effectively respond to our own emotions, then in turn we can be better communicators and peacemakers, both in our families and in our communities.

When emotions are as high as they have been, our urge to do something may seem urgent. Yet here’s a fact: the more emotionally challenged we are, the more likely we are to react and the less likely we are to respond to others effectively instead of yelling, texting passive aggressive slights, or tapping “block”. The first step is to try and recognise our emotions, which is harder than it sounds. This can mean simply pausing, taking a breath, or slowing our scroll online. (Or putting the phone down altogether.) It’s only then that we can consider how to channel these emotions into a calibrated and regulated response. By validating our emotions, we’re better equipped to respond to others with thoughtful intentionality and purpose. It’s like how the airlines tell us to put on our oxygen masks first, before we help others put on theirs. This is the nuanced difference between being emotionally reactive and effectively responsive.

Validating the emotions that underlie our thoughts and behaviours is actually doing something and can de-escalate conflict. Validation – a buzzword that’s often misunderstood and wrongfully maligned as mawky Millennial jargon – is a practice our society could employ more regularly. Here’s what validation is not:

- Agreeing with thoughts and actions

- Endorsing behaviours or encouraging their continuation.

- Indulging and wallowing in emotion

- Appeasing another and “telling them what they want to hear”

- Legitimising a false narrative

Validation is recognition, acceptance and acknowledgement of another person’s emotional experience. It’s just one way to move closer toward peace. Simply, it’s an exercise in recognising another person’s inner experiences. And it’s proven to lead to less polarising behaviours. A family gathering or work event may not be the place to engage in deeper exploration of someone’s beliefs, but it could be an opportunity to acknowledge a family member’s emotions are valid, even if we disagree with their thoughts and beliefs.

By putting these tools into practice, we actively involve ourselves in manifesting healthy families and social groups, which are microcosms of a healthy culture. It won’t reverse toxic behaviours or undo the effects of violence, but it creates healthier conversations and relationships with our world and ourselves.

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Dana Dorfman is a New York City-based psychotherapist and writer