It was 6.07pm on August 4th, when time in Lebanon got suspended and LIFE threw a nation into an unexpected new dimension of pain and sorrow, projecting all Lebanese into trauma-land with such a violence, brutality and unprecedented intensity.
6.07pm has been carved in the psyche of the whole nation… and will remain forever. A slap in the face of every single Lebanese, a hard one, NO… actually the hardest one ever. No matter where you were on the globe on that day, and as a Lebanese, you had surely felt its resonance deep into your soul and will feel it again and again and again for so many days to come as your body, your psyche and your nervous system have registered it all, will remember it and will require you to process it at some point in time in order to get past it.
At 6.07pm on August 4th, the gate to trauma-land was opened wide and Lebanese were granted a free, fast-track pass in. Individually but also as a collective, all Lebanese will sit in the effect of this traumatisation and will have to face it, deal with its symptoms. They will have to reclaim part of their energy that got frozen as a result of the experience they had to go through in an event defined outside of the law of life itself. An event that created a huge rupture in the flow of life, disturbed and violated the balance and harmony of their beings and pushed them out of any normalcy.
This trauma will need to be released and be taken seriously. What we know about the human brain tells us that the brain does not differentiate between physical and emotional wounding, So pain is pain for the brain. But as individuals, we pay more attention and get more concerned when our wounds are physical. In a similar way others show more empathy towards us when we are injured in our physical body. We see them coming to help and support us, trying to ease our pain. But unfortunately we don’t show nor witness the same level of care and attention when our emotional body is traumatised. We find ourselves neglecting to heal it, minimising the intensity of the trauma and not fully acknowledging its impact. So obviously we don’t ask for or expect from others any support to help us process it and heal it.
But it is very crucial, after all the harshness of that 6.07pm, for Lebanese, especially those who experienced the event, to bring self-awareness into the Trauma they have collected and stored inside their being. It is equally crucial that each one finds his or her own way to process it, heal it and move past it. This will spare us passing it on from one generation to the next since trauma is intergenerational.
We fell hard together… all of us and we acknowledged our pain, let us now focus on rising up together… all of us and acknowledge our healing.
J’adore , très touchant et en même temps ça fait un PUSH vers un avenir rayonnant. 👍
Oui Walid.. il faut devoir se remettre debout, retrouver son équilibre, reposer son wagon sur les rails de la vie et continuer la route..
Thanks Nicole for these healing thoughts.
How do you suggest people deal with the psychological trauma? What does one tell kids who lived through the experience? (some where home alone in some cases)
Thanks
Hi Bob,
I Hope all is well. Trauma is a very complex subject and as a species we have never witnessed life outside of trauma. We go through our individual traumas but also sit in the collective one. And every-time we heal on a personal level we are participating in healing the collective.
The main thing in healing trauma is to receive acknowledgment, to be SEEN and HEARD in a compassionate way. Sharing our experience but focusing on the emotion without spiralling down into the story is a first step. Expressing our feelings in creative ways is a great tool, through painting for example is how I assist people who come to me..
Also releasing the trauma on a somatic level is key. Our body stores the memory of the trauma and unless we help it heal we wont be fully healed.
With kids it would be great to allow them to express their feelings gently, reassuring them that they are safe and expressing with colors, paint, drawings, dancing ( moving the body to unblock the frozen energy) etc.. also through writing if they are old enough to do so.
I hope this helps and let me know if I can assist in any way.🙏🏻