Terror doing its job of causing stress

Steven Hendlin

It’s been three years since the devastation and horror of Sept. 11,

2001. We’ve had three years to grieve and to recover. And, at least

outwardly, we’ve done a pretty good job of it. But how has our

jarring wake-up call to terrorism affected us emotionally?

As a clinical psychologist in private practice for 30 years,

here’s what I notice, not only in my consulting room, but in my

community and culture at large.

I see many of us having become more hardened and desensitized to

one another than we were three years ago. The world around us seems

to be getting tougher, not kinder and gentler. Of course, love,

caring and sensitivity still fight the good fight to make themselves

felt. But the rage and hate engendered in terrorism have clearly

affected us and are showing strong resistance, especially when fueled

by righteousness in all of its flavors.

On the social level, I notice this in a growing number of acts of

common incivility. From golfers attacking each other on the course to

rage-filled drivers putting others in danger, to spouses who can’t

stand each other, to “reality” television that promotes lying,

humiliation and manipulation, we see all kinds of examples in the

news media and our entertainment -- examples of a lack of respect and

concern for one another and a quickness to follow our impulses. Does

this growing lack of decency have anything to do with terrorism? I

think it does.

I view our incivility as a defensive mechanism to survive the

ongoing terror of our lives. We feel, both consciously and

unconsciously, the need to defend ourselves against the helplessness

we feel in the face of terrorism. And, as they like to say in the

military world, “The best defense is a good offense.”

We have been forced to numb ourselves to the relentless acts of

unconscionable cruelty and violence so that we will not become

overwhelmed. We have learned to emotionally turn off, to harden our

hearts, in order to maintain a semblance of control and sanity. And I

would suggest that this numbing leads to incivility.

How many beheadings can we tolerate? How many times will we be

able to tolerate the pain of hearing about hundreds of school

children dying innocently at the hands of terrorists, as they did

recently in Beslan, Russia? When the agony of war drags on, at what

point do we just not care anymore about politics or elections and

just want to stop feeling the pain?

And yet we are still on edge, still anxious, still wondering what

will happen next that will test our ability to cope. We struggle

against becoming too negative, too depressed, fearful or angry. We

don’t want to let in too much of the absurdity that we know is always

lurking just around the bend. So we protect ourselves by tempering

the power of the news, making sure only a tolerable measure touches

our hearts.

Because of this numbing, it’s clear to me that three years later,

we are experiencing a stress from terrorism that is insidious and yet

effective. Whether we want to admit it, terrorism works. It’s working

on all of us, and it doesn’t make us “girlie men” to admit it.

* STEVEN HENDLIN lives in Corona del Mar, and is the author of

“Overcoming the Inheritance Taboo.”