Guilt into gratitude
I was 8 minutes into a podcast interview of the psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk with Kristen Tippet when he recounted the story of one of his first patients; a Vietnam veteran suffering from crippling nightmares. Dr Van Der Kolk had prescribed medication to alleviate this traumatic reliving and yet, two weeks later at his check up, the patient declared he hadn’t taken them at all. ‘I need to have these nightmares. I need to be a living memorial to my friends who died in Vietnam’. This quote arrested me. I paused the podcast and sighed - a deep knowing of this sentiment washed over me. How much have I done that, consciously and subconsciously? How much has it driven me to do my work? How much trauma have I hung onto, weighing me down, fogging my brain, affecting my body, mind and soul?
Like every other Syrian, the war in Syria has had a radical impact on my life. It has shifted my career from clinician to humanitarian and social entrepreneur. My activism and humanitarian work has exiled me from my home country, because I am charged with the offence of treating civilians in opposition areas. The bricks and mortar we’ve lost as a family pale into insignificance compared to the loss of more than 30 members of our extended family who have been killed or disappeared during this bloody onslaught.
And yet, what has affected me most profoundly is the suffering of others that I have witnessed, both in person and in the thousands of images, videos and accounts I’ve seen and read over the last ten years. I feel at a visceral level that my pain is deeply enmeshed and interwoven with the pain of everyone who has suffered a loss and had her life turned upside down and inside out until she doesn’t know which way is up.
I expect every frontliner who reads this will know what I’m talking about. Whether you’re a health or aid worker, therapist or firefighter, social worker or campaigner - the amount of injustice, pain and suffering, life and death we witness with a frightening regularity clings to us, whether we admit it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. Every day an SOS call, every day a heartbreaking story, every day more problems than solutions, every day you do your work and feel it is not enough. That it’s never enough.
There have been countless times when I didn’t want to see photos of victims, or read the news, or step on stage to retell the tales of our oppression and yet the tsunami of desire to keep the memories of those who suffered and died alive, the commitment I’ve made not to turn a blind eye or close my heart has pushed me to continue to bear witness.
Dr Van Der Kolk believes that trauma affects not only those who have suffered it, but also the people around them, especially those who love them. I know from my own experience, and from the interviews I have conducted with other frontliners, that most of us are burnt out and traumatised. And yet, most frontliners, like me, deny our trauma, precisely because it didn’t happen to us. It’s not my mum who died with Covid in the ICU, it’s not me who was raped, it wasn’t my house that burnt down or my child’s school that was bombed, so who am I to complain? Who am I to dare to suggest I’ve been so profoundly shaken by all I’ve witnessed? Whenever I touch this feeling, like a finger touching hot metal, I recoil and tell myself off; ‘this isn’t about you! Don’t be so pathetic and selfish. You’re here to help not to mope so focus on your work’. And with that, I close the lid on my pain and get on with my work.
I choose to keep the memories of those who have suffered alive by retelling their stories to anyone who’ll listen - in the media, on global stages but, most often, in my sleep. I’ve given my talks more in my mind and heart than I have to other people. I’ve been dedicated to being a living testimonial, hanging onto what has happened, what I have seen, heard, smelt. I’ve lost count of how many times and how many millions of people have heard me talk about the Urm Kubra school bombing, where I treated school children after their school was bombed by an incendiary weapon, a napalm like chemical which seared through their flesh - a story captured on film by a BBC Panorama team and which has been the subject of two documentaries.
We must acknowledge and remember the suffering we go through and cause others so we can break the cycle of violence and trauma. But how do we do it without the tremendous cost to our personal wellbeing? What exactly are we afraid of letting go of? This year, triggered by the 10th anniversary of the Syrian revolution, I finally slowed down enough to face some of my trauma and reflect on a decade of campaigning. For many years I thought my relentless speaking about the war crimes being commited against civilians, the bombings of hospitals, the burning of children was to raise awareness in order to generate care and action - basically to get help - and of course, that is true. It still flabbergasts me how little most people know about our ongoing tragedy, and it has also never stopped amazing me how many people stand up and support us, moved by our story. But that's only part of the truth. The greater truth is that it is part of our resistance, our defiance, our two fingers held up to every representative of darkness, every peddler of hate and war. It is the fuel that keeps us going when we are otherwise running on empty, with no other solution at hand but to keep talking! It's reassuring and life affirming when you feel as if you are talking into a vacuum and someone responds and says I hear you, I see you, I am with you. Every time I have spoken on stage I have made a beautiful human connection - a supporter, an ally or friend and that feeds me, it keeps me going. It heals me.
But this is also not the whole story. So many frontliners and survivors turned activists feel that talking about it hasn't made them feel better, it hasn't lessened the pain or helped them heal. The key is in what that veteran said and what was echoed by a frontliner I interviewed recently. Hala is a towering pillar of strength, truly representing the best of feminine power, yet she is so deeply and profoundly injured. She lived through some of the most barbaric times on our planet, during the siege of Aleppo, where bombings, hunger and death were daily realities FOR YEARS. “They tell me I should come out of it”, she says, referring to her trauma, “but I am a living memorial to all my dear friends who were martyred, to all the injustice and horror we have faced.” Now a refugee, she tells me she has a wall in her new home dedicated to the images of loved ones who died, next to slogans from the revolution and a pot of earth taken from Aleppo on the day they were forcibly evacuated from their homes. She thinks she would be dishonouring the martyred if she doesn't hang onto the pain and actively relive it. Her survivor’s guilt is keeping her trapped in her trauma.
Ah, guilt. Every single frontliner I have spoken to speaks of this shadow that darkens their world. My husband used to be incredulous whenever I’d say I felt guilty on a day off. He’d chide me that I work day and night, I don’t take holidays, I don’t buy new things, that I was doing everything humanly possible to alleviate suffering and all that seemed to do to me was make me suffer and feel more guilty. “You're one of the few on earth who shouldn't feel guilty,” he’d say. Rationally I’d know he was right but it wasn't my embodied experience. Things became really severe at one point I recall in 2014, right before I crashed and burnt and broke. I didn't go out with my friends because “it wasn't the time to be joyous”, if I laughed, it had to be dark sarcastic humour, preferably self-deprecating to be acceptable. And on the occasions that I would ‘indulge’ and go out for a meal or buy something new, I would spend an age justifying my choice to myself.
The nasty judgement of others of course never helps. The number of times I’d hear someone comment, with a toxic mixture of malice, envy and ignorance about someone's social media post if they dared to show their or their family’s happiness. They'd be accused of gloating, or relishing life while it was being taken from others, they'd basically be demonised or called savages or both. I only really, truly realised the nasty depths that guilt can run to when I got pregnant 2 years ago.
I had tried for many years to conceive and when it hadn't happened, I'd all but written it off. So when I saw that double red stripe, I was in utter shock. I sat for hours repeating over and over again “oh my god”. Once the shock wore off and the pregnancy went beyond the dodgy 12 week period I caught myself one day in the most absurd action, a true moment of growth and transformation, ridiculous and painful as it was at the time. That day, I was appreciating my growing belly and felt so happy I could pop. I think I was literally skipping about feeling high on life. I was wondering what my daughter would look like and be like, ecstatic that she was a girl, a powerful woman of tomorrow. I was flicking through baby website stuff so elated that I, after all that time, was going to get to be a mama at the young age of 40 when suddenly an intrusive thought appeared in my mind. An uninvited memory, a picture of an injured child we’d failed to save, followed by the heartbroken image of his father.
My joy disappeared in an instant. I told myself I was forgetting what I did, the pain in the world - an oldie but not so goldie record came on in my mind, the “you should feel so guilty” track and I was about to descend from guilt to shame when something remarkable happened. In that moment I saw myself from without, like an out of body experience, looking in on the situation and seeing with such clarity how I was, in fact, actively suppressing my joy! Holy sheeeeeeeet. It suddenly seemed like the most preposterous thing I had ever done. After all the pain, the suffering, the bearing witness, the hard work, the longing, the tears, the misery, the search for happiness after it had disappeared for years and here I was - getting in my own fucking way, telling myself to stop being happy!
I burst into tears in a sudden feeling of tenderness towards this hurt and injured me who'd lashed out at happy me and we hugged each other for a long time. Happy me told hurt me how sorry I was that I was hurting so much that I can't accept joy in my life. Hurt and guilty me told happy me how I deserved to be happy, to be skipping and jumping. That any father or mother would only wish me every happiness as I embraced my own maternal journey including that father who’d lost his child - especially that father who’d lost his child.
I told myself that there was zero, absolutely zero to feel guilty about. I had not killed anyone. I had not made anyone suffer. I was trying to do my best to alleviate that suffering and there was no way that I could last on this journey as a frontliner if I didn't proactively cultivate and allow joy; if I didn't relish every bit of happiness that god, life, the universe blessed me with; if I wasn't present, noticing the ray of sunlight, the smell of flowers, laughter with friends, love with my lover, and appreciating my growing belly.
Guilt keeps us trapped. It fuels our resistance to healing by not only making us feel unworthy, but by calling ourselves disloyal backstabbers for even daring to think of it. Guilt keeps us caged up, walled off in our pain unable to let the hurt out and the love in. Far from fueling any positivity, it disconnects us from ourselves, from each other and from every positive thing in our life, colouring everything a shit brown.
From that day on, guilt hasn’t plagued me. I have learned the art of turning guilt into gratitude - a simple but profoundly transformative practice. Scientists have finally caught up with what the ancient spiritual traditions have been advocating for years; be grateful. Gratitude brings joy, peace, contentment and a profound sense of well being. It not only opens the doors for more blessings but enables us to share our blessings more open-heartedly. Gratitude isn't an act. It's a state of being that we eventually get to once we have practised it enough.
Thanks to the brilliant plasticity of our brains, we can rewire it to become more grateful with daily practice as short as a minute long. The more I have practiced it the more that I am able to be grateful for what is, whether good, bad or ugly. The deeper I have delved into it the more that I have come to appreciate and recognise myself, and in turn, everyone else around me.
I personally felt its most transformative power when I created my “guilt into gratitude” practice - an emergency tool of sorts that stops me from slipping into the negative downward spiral of guilt and shame and instead elevates me to the beautiful levels of love and compassion.
It goes like this:
Enter the guilt trigger, say I am about to sit at a lovely meal with a table full of delicious food and I think, ‘oh god, so many people are starving’. I catch myself at that stage and close my eyes and think - ‘thank you so much for my incredible delicious food, for having what I need and want and more.’ I think of all the people who are hungry, without the food they need and say, ‘I wish to share this food, this nourishment, this blessing with you. May we all be happy and healthy with a table full of goodness in front of us. May I be able to help end hunger for all.’
Regardless of the guilt trigger, the practice has 3 consistent components to it:
Recognising and being grateful for our blessing
Recognising the suffering and those who have not in our world
Making a wish to share - a prayer - may we all have what we need to thrive and a promise I’ll do what I can to alleviate suffering.
Try it.
Make today the day you commit to releasing the nonsensical guilt that is stopping you from being your best and brightest self. Replace it instead with gratitude and appreciation for yourself, for all you have been through, for all you have endured, for all that you have and have not, for all that you are and are not. You are worthy and deserving.
Healing ourselves is the greatest tribute we can pay to those we have lost in the fight for a better world. The greatest memorial we can build is one that not only survives but thrives. There is nothing to fear from healing. We won't be silenced, we will continue to tell the stories and make them felt so that they create care and action. We cannot create a kind, joyful, peaceful world until we embrace these things ourselves, body, heart and soul. Let us not be fueled by anger, bitterness and guilt but by a relentless quest for justice, dignity and joy grounded in our love and compassion, for ourselves and for each other. It's only by allowing ourselves to heal, individually and collectively, that we can be a positive, living memorial that elevates human consciousness and creates the kind of collective memory that breaks the cycle of violence and trauma, for all our benefit.
