In one of the past interviews I conducted with soldiers of the IDF's special units, one of them revealed to me that alongside his composure, dedication to the mission and optimism, he sometimes allows himself to cry in order to cope with the emotional load he accumulates during operational activities. I was surprised, certainly by his rugged appearance that conveyed a monolithic, impenetrable toughness.
I remembered that warrior this week when I was exposed to the horror stories from the South, and wondered who could, if anything, not shed a tear in front of them. There is no need to mince words around these events, they fill the pages of newspapers and flood the news sites and social networks. This incessant media has also turned civilians into the front line we find ourselves in, turning this war into a war for the resilience of us all.
A war for sanity, for our mental health, a war against the accumulated trauma that surrounds us, which intensifies with the exposure of another horror story, of another person who was injured, kidnapped, murdered.
How do we proceed from here?
Mental health professionals are often asked how to deal with the horror, and the answer, especially when the injury is deep and bleeding, is complex. When a friend asked me, "How do we even go on from here?" I reflected on the words of that warrior, which were for me – and should be for all of us – a lesson in humility; Because none of us is truly immune, not even the finest warrior on earth. Even this fighter, and of course he is not the only one, allowed himself to give space and legitimacy to difficult feelings, to the fear that seeps into the human cracks between the strong rocks of the soul.
Documentation: IDF forces prepare for prolonged fighting in Gaza / IDF Spokesperson
This is an extremely difficult time, and it seems that superhuman abilities are required to deny what is happening before our eyes. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung argued for a "collective unconscious," but the new frontier seems to have created a different collective experience, one of national collective trauma. Contrary to what Jung claimed, this trauma pulsates and lives within us. It overwhelms the saa and glides beyond any mental boundary. This trauma is completely conscious, one that may yet become intergenerational, just like the trauma created by the Holocaust.
Perforated tissue
We are all "one human tissue," as the song goes, and when one of us goes, something dies in us – and something stays with it. This is our reality these days – a perforated reality, damaged, inhuman and intolerable – and it will remain so in the near future, and probably for a long time afterwards.
Around the never-ending stories from the South, we all feel the pain, the sadness. They hold us, literally gripping. The mind is filled with thoughts and "we can no longer get rid of them," as Freud put it. Freud also understood what this warrior implemented, perhaps without even understanding why: to be strong, as mentioned, is not to be completely immune. It means hurting, and at the same time being strong, and moving forward.
This is true on the battlefield, it is true for supporters of combat, and it is true for every citizen. The true emotional resilience – personal, social, national – is not in eliminating and flattening pain, but in moving forward with the dynamic and difficult, and sometimes unbearable, burden that reality imposes and imposes on us.
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