What gives me hope, when I look at how the world is now responding to the legacies of mass violence and repression, is the ability to speak and listen.
Speak and listen. Those are the two essential steps. They’re not just important to move forward, but to protect ourselves. When you need to cry – take the time. You must take the time. Because when you run away from grief, you’re also running away from parts of yourself. And it's not just the tears – it's also the rage. It's very hard to be angry, because we’re often afraid of our own anger. But every emotion matters. And this brings me to something I’d like to share – what I call the Principles of Self-Healing. I originally prepared it for psychotherapists, but really, it’s for anyone who works with human pain, with evil, with terror – whether you’re a therapist, a journalist, a peace worker, or just someone who cares.
The first step is to develop awareness – even of how your body responds. Your body is wise. It will often let you know what your conscious mind is not yet ready to see. Pay attention to it. The second step is to find words. Learn to name your inner experience, to articulate your emotions. One of my favourite quotes – one that I had posted at the entrance to my office – comes from Bruno Bettelheim:
What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds continue to fester from generation to generation.
So first, recognise your reactions. Then, contain them. Because it’s not just the emotion that can feel overwhelming – it’s the intensity of it. You have to know your own level of comfort so that you can stay open, tolerant, and ready to hear anything – especially when you work with others. And then comes something that I think is so liberating: every emotion has a beginning, a middle, and an end. People fear that if they start crying, they’ll cry forever. Or if they scream, they’ll never stop. But nobody ever cried forever. Nobody ever screamed forever. Let it run its course – without resorting to defense, without shutting yourself down too quickly.
And to heal – and to grow – you must also accept that nothing will ever be the same. People say, “I want things to go back to normal.” But there is no "normal" after trauma. Instead, we have to ask: What now? What can we build?
When we feel wounded, we need to take time to understand what we’re feeling, to soothe ourselves, and to heal, before we can go back out and offer ourselves to others again. And that’s true whether you’re a therapist, a caregiver, or a journalist. Anyone who listens – truly listens – must be fully present. And to be present, you have to have tended to your own wounds first.
If something someone says triggers an unexplored pain in you, seek help. It’s okay. It just means you want to do your work with integrity. And that’s a good thing. Any strong emotional reaction: grief, mourning, rage – may bring up old material. If you allow it to move through you, you can grow through it. That’s the gift hidden inside the pain.
This is so important – don’t do this alone. Find others. Create a network of people who understand what you’re doing. That’s why we build organisations. Not only to act, but to support one another, to hold each other when the work becomes too much. And finally: be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to feel joy, to have fun. That’s not a luxury in this field – it’s a necessity. Without it, you can’t fulfill your responsibilities, not to others and not to yourself.
I often say: have fun. But understand, it’s not about being happy every day. I don’t wake up smiling every morning. No. But I wake up with a sense of purpose. And that is what sustains me.
Dr Yael Danieli (www.dryaeldanieli.com) is a clinical psychologist, traumatologist, victimologist and psychohistorian. Having developed the first program to help Nazi Holocaust Survivors and their Children in the 1970s, she has devoted much of her career to studying, treating, writing about, and preventing lifelong and multigenerational impacts of massive trauma worldwide, to ensuring victims’ rights, the rights of future generations, and to reparative justice.
In the last two decades Dr Danieli created the Danieli Inventory – the gold measure to (comparatively) assessing intergenerational legacies of Trauma and founded the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma (www.ICMGLT.org).
As a victimologist, she has spent over four decades participating in drafting, adopting, implementing victims' rights, and ensuring that victims’ rights reach the victims.