Collective trauma is a psychological response to stressful and shocking events such as wars, terrorist attacks, plane crashes and natural disasters that affects the entire or a considerable part of the society. Experiencing multiple losses by a community on a wide scale, while they feel they have no power to control it, is a manifestation of an “accumulated grief".
Unfortunately, during the last 4 decades, Iranian society has experienced many significant tragic incidents. Here are some examples:
Each of these catastrophic events has had an immediate and long term effect. Each occurrence has traumatized society and has been stored in our collective memory. In the long run, those dreadful memories will be transmitted from one generation to the next.
Currently, the most part of Iranian society is suffering from accumulative and collective grief, because of the chain of the vicious historical developments they have gone through.
Common social values and goals such as longing for freedom, passion for fighting discrimination, injustice or mistreatment brings members of the community under one social umbrella to share the same feeling about the situation they are in or have experienced.
Because of such common values, when someone loses his or her life for a common cause, the rest of the society feels the pain of losing them. In such cases, people are related to each other by means of their common social values and concerns. That is why, they don't even know the individuals who lost their lives; but still the rest of the community grief their loss. Most people did not know Jina Amini, Nika Shakarami or Kian Peerfalak and Hadith Najafi but the community responded to these losses and strongly felt a common pain and sorrow for losing them.
The Iranian community, during the last several months, has been facing collective grief on a wider scale, which needs to be addressed.
Unprocessed traumatic experiences and grief can lead to emotional dysregulations, surge of stress, lack of motivation, increase the likelihood of illness, PTSD, relationship distress with family members or coworkers and weakening of the immune system.
Coping strategies: empowering self and supporting others
Each person may mourn in a different way. However, we as human beings need each other to relieve grief and overcome the pain of collective traumas. In the context of the current challenging time it is important to take some positive steps to empower ourselves and support others. Here are some tips to consider.
Taking such steps encourages your brain to register positive thoughts about your ability and role. Positive thoughts support you to feel that you are strong and capable of taking measures for supporting others and pushing for positive outcomes. Your positive contribution, although small, would be a great asset for society. More importantly, when you feel good about your positive role, you will become more resilient and optimistic. Hope and resiliency increase psychological wellbeing.
Arvin is a Registered Psychotherapist (qualifying) with CRPO; He can be reached at:
(416)306-9954
[email protected]