A Harvard-educated psychiatrist and mind-body and integrative medicine pioneer, Dr. Gordon is the Founder & CEO of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, which aims to make self-awareness, self-care, and group support central to all healthcare and education systems. A licensed clinical psychologist, Diana supports individuals affected by war and displacement, refugees, incarcerated and detained populations, and torture and sexual violence survivors with integrated evidence-informed modalities, including Compassionate Inquiry®, EMDR, TF-CBT and polyvagal theory principles.
In this excerpt, our guests reveal how presence, community, and bravely showing up in the midst of a war zone can transform helplessness into strength. Hear the full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
“Something’s going on in me. I think it may be a grief, or a sadness—a heaviness, about how the world is right now.” – Kevin Young
At the moment, part of me is listening to the drone that’s above my head right now. The rest of me is just being here, not anticipating what will happen, even though they have given a lot of warning signs that we will be bombed soon.” – Diana Gharib
DR. GORDON:
So many people are feeling very overwhelmed and troubled, and they don’t quite know what to do. Some people are very fired up in opposition. Others are too scared to do much of anything. And then there are a whole lot of people who are withdrawing or numbing themselves. I’m trying to work with people who are ready to wake up and discover what they’re meant to be doing at this time.
DIANA:
When the escalation in Lebanon started, I went into ‘freeze’ for two days. I just started offering sessions again, as so many clients are saying, ‘We’re helpless. We don’t know how this will unfold. What can we do? How can we support ourselves or our loved ones?’
I asked myself that question, and the answer, ‘Be brave,’ came into my mind. ‘Just show up.’ I could have chosen to stay where I was with my kids. But I decided I needed to stand up. It’s ‘sumud’—in Arabic that translates to steadfastness, resilience… Sumud is a deep-rooted Palestinian value of nonviolent resistance that we always return to. It’s an active, daily resistance, and it has been for generations, since the Nakba of 1948, when my grandmother walked from Safed to Lebanon. Then my mother, and all the wars she witnessed, then me, and now my kids. We are four generations of women witnessing war. The power that gives me is to be brave, to show up and do this work. To have a voice.
DR. GORDON:
After being in Bosnia, it became clear that the time to work is when the war begins. As soon as the war in Kosovo began in 1998, a colleague and I went in. Helping people where the need is great feels good to me. I also believe that everyone has a greater capacity to understand and care for themselves than most realize at first.
DIANA:
At the beginning we were very vigilant about the noise of the drone. But as time passed, it became part of our daily experience. We have names for the drone. We shout funny cursing words to the drone. We make fun out of it. Sometimes we just say, ‘Hi, you see us, we’re here.’ It’s amazing how the brain—this resilient part—adapts to keep us going. At the moment, while I’m sitting here, I can hear it, but my brain has learned that I can focus somewhere else.
DR. GORDON:
After 9/11 we worked with New York City firefighters. Three hundred firefighters were killed. The other firefighters were terribly grief-stricken as they regarded them as their brothers. At first they were very skeptical about our work. Kevin Guy, a lieutenant in the NYFD from the Bronx—one of the toughest, funniest, smartest human beings I’ve ever met—when he first witnessed our work, teaching meditation, stretching, mental imagery… He said, “What is this, some kind of chick flick?” But he became our greatest advocate. After six or eight months he said to me, “Hey Jim, I get who you are. You’re just like us. You like to help people, and you like to be where the action is.”
What does it mean to show up for others as medicine? It’s about transforming anger into action, and it’s beautiful when that’s possible. It’s about recognizing and honouring all the emotions that are coming up: the helplessness, the hopelessness… It’s about saying, ‘Yes, those are there.’ And then watching as those feelings can change. I’m thinking about mothers in Gaza who lost their children, their family members, their homes. The simple fact that there was somebody here who cared, who understood what they’d been through, who was here with them. That was the beginning of coming back from, in their words, “The edge of suicide.” Through helping others, that’s where we discover meaning and purpose, as well as connection.
DIANA:
I work with victims of torture in different prisons around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The resistance I first met with from these men and women was, ‘we can’t be fixed.’ And at that moment I dropped the idea that they needed to be fixed, because they weren’t broken. When I am able to see behind the trauma a person is carrying and just see the essence of that person, the trauma starts to unfold, and healing begins to happen.
How do we find common ground with people we see as different, as ‘other,’ as ‘the enemy?’
I believe we need to start by finding a common social language. We’ve all been living in this country for many years, and we share many things, like our food. We all do tabbouleh, and we all do hummus. It can start with food. Or it can start with dance, as we all do the Dabke. Why don’t we start here?
DR. GORDON:
One of the gifts of trauma is that it begins to break down old barriers and old perceptions, and we begin to become more open to commonalities—including the commonality of our suffering. It doesn’t matter what sector we’re in. Our work is about helping people emerge from the common trauma to see the other commonalities we share with each other.
DIANA:
Presence is another path. Just being here, not anticipating what will happen, even though they have given a lot of warning signs that we will be bombed soon. Not really thinking about what happened earlier today with the bombs, or how I noticed my six-year-old child playing Israel, Iran and Hezbollah with his toy dinosaurs. I’m just here, enjoying the moment.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the full conversation, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review and share.
Editor’s Note: This post is comprised of edited excerpts drawn from The Gifts of Trauma podcast transcript. Selected passages have been carefully woven together to create a cohesive narrative that speaks in the guests’ voices and faithfully represents their perspectives. – Rosemary Davies-Janes
