Wow. What an incredible articulation of a topic that I'm sure many of us have rolled around in our noggins before (or are currently).
I'm a mental health professional and this has given me not only language but the realization that I've had better boundaries with my work life (where I see some really horrific shit) than I have with what I consume on social media.
I remember reading an account of how, after an oil rig disaster, survivors were able to speak to a therapist. Many of them went on to process the event and not develop PTSD. The therapist they talked to, though, who was not present for the disaster, *did* develop PTSD. Mental health professionals have such difficult jobs, but such important ones 💖
Yes! Sometimes I feel like it's almost a reflex to check social media. I've started signing out of my accounts when I feel stressed because I'll absentmindedly go to Twitter or Instagram almost without realizing.
I have OCD of the type where it shunts horrific images and scenarios in horrendous clarity into my head at any time of day. Due to this, I make the choice to avoid images and videos I know will be fed into my brain goblin and regurgitated to me with the faces of my loved ones, particularly my five year old son, attached. It makes me feel guilty that I can't bear witness to the atrocities happening, but I'm not sure traumatising and triggering myself would be of any particular help to anyone. I can still feel empathy and agony for the plight of these people without watching every video of children ripped apart. I feel guilty because these people experiencing these things cannot choose not to witness it, cannot choose to escape it, cannot choose not to press play on a video on social media. But perhaps, watching that video is not a helpful action in of itself, it is about what we choose to do with the knowledge that terrible things are happening and figuring out how we can help - whether that be talking to people IRL, donating to fundraisers, sharing gofundmes, attending protests, signing petitions... I feel like some people think that just watching the videos and looking at the images is activism all in itself. I don't think I would say it is.
I have OCD too, and mine does the SAME thing for me. The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more my brain will relay those images. It's BRUTAL. I totally agree that while realizing these atrocities are happening, we can still do the groundwork and continue to push for change while not watching the brutality ourselves.
I feel like we just have to accept the assistance that our bodies/brains are willing to give and always pushing others to do the same. This makes me hopeful.
> The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more my brain will relay those images. It's BRUTAL.
Yes, same! Sometimes I just have to focus on it and force my way through the entire thing until the end to get relief from it. It's absolutely shit. I'm sorry you experience it too 💖
The important thing from my perspective is the lack of societal appreciation of our neurodiversity. Different people can see the same stimuli and have very different intensities of reaction.
While I don’t have OCD, there are certain types of news stories about awful things abusive adults visit on young children that I can’t read without it ruining my day - too close to home.
So please don’t feel guilty about not being able to meet neurotypical ‘standards’. In my experience, people with OCD suffer from too much empathy that they can’t easily turn off, not too little. Protecting yourself from vicarious traumatisation is not selfish.
If more people knew about this bleak reality of OCD, surely they wouldn't use the term so flippantly and take it seriously! It has made my brain a total mess and I am in awe of those who live their lives with this awful thing.
To be honest, I’ve wondered about you, David, in this exact way- you seem brave enough, or maybe well walled off enough, to regularly examine some truly heinous stuff in the news and around the world, but everyone has their point where there’s just no more space left under the rug for us to sweep our trauma. I’m glad you try to look after yourself so that you don’t get to the point of emotional overload.
I’ve been a critical care nurse for the majority of my adult life- 12 years now- and there have been a couple of occasions where I experienced truly horrific things in the course of my job, went home and thought I could just muscle through, only to find myself unable to get out of bed or focus at all the next day. I’ve skipped out on the trauma de-briefs offered by my department because I thought I should be strong enough and experienced enough in my job to not need it- I know now how naive and foolish that line of thinking was. I really enjoyed Ross’s clinical description of something I’ve experienced myself multiple times. It felt validating.
The work you do is so important, and infinite respect to you. Also, thanks for the kind words about my own brain.
I have some boundaries in place, and people to talk to and dissect things that I am *mostly* OK. But thanks for raising that; it's always something I need to keep an eye on. I have a fairly strong fortitude for things, but we all have to keep an eye on ourselves and and reassess from time to time.
I had that same experience. I don’t think I needed to attend our trauma debriefs with a therapist after events on our unit (acute adol psych nurse), because I have a thick wall (not entirely healthy) but I finally went to one and started crying-totally unexpectedly. Now I go and now I do therapy.
Thanks for the feedback and the incredible work you do. It's not naive or foolish at all, I think there's such a strong cultural expectation to be able to "handle it" that we don't recognise how much it affects us.
PS the hardships that ICU nurses endure regularly , but especially through COVID was unimaginably difficult. I know a lot of ICU nurses who had to tx out after COVID.
(Just a warning, but this story is about suicide.)
The first real, visceral memory of death I have is from when I was 14. It was after school, and I went upstairs to my room to watch Animaniacs. But instead of cartoons, what was on TV was a police standoff between a man on the freeway and the LAPD. My family had just moved to Los Angeles, and it's not uncommon for standoffs and car chases to be televised there (Is this normal in other cities/countries? I feel like it isn't.) Anyway, this man had parked his truck on the freeway, and then set it ablaze with a molotov cocktail. Then he grabbed a shotgun, placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. The camera crew in the helicopter tried to back away at the last second, but it was too late and I and every other kid trying to watch cartoons that day saw a man kill himself on live TV. Ask me anything else about that day, and I wouldn't be able to tell you. But I have a very clear memory of the moment of that man's death nearly 30 years later.
There's a Wikipedia article about him, Daniel Jones. He was HIV positive and suffering from cancer, and he was angry about the treatment he was receiving from his insurance company. There was some tut-tutting in the media about breaking into children's programming to air a deadly standoff, but they're still doing it to this day. If it bleeds it leads, I guess.
Horrific. Animaniacs replaced by that. The whole obsession here in the US of following police chases is just so... ugh. Policing as entertainment. And then stories like what you just told. I am so sorry.
And thanks for linking to the man - the real person behind this bit of "entertainment" the channel was going for.
"Jones was born on April 15, 1958, and was from Long Beach, California. He worked as a maintenance worker at the Renaissance Hotel in Long Beach, a job he had been employed at since 1995. He lived in a small two-bedroom bungalow off an alleyway in Long Beach. He lived alone with his pet dog Gladdis, a seven-year-old Labrador-whippet mixed-breed."
Yep. He's much more remembered for how he died than why he was angry in the first place. Says it all really.
Weirdly I have two strong childhood memories about televised car chases, the other being the OJ Bronco chase in 1994. I specifically remember it was on a Friday because the coverage pre-emptied my favorite Friday night sitcoms, and I annoyed they were still covering it when he was just sitting in his driveway. Fortunately this time no one was hurt (on live TV at least).
Same. It's difficult to explain something like this, say to a coworker half my age-I'm 42, and how profound and completely fucked it was to see on TV in the middle of the afternoon when I got home from school. The internet and 24 hour news cycle is never not bombarding us with tragic and very horrific shit. Like, is the impact the same now as it was then? We have a little more choice in how much we consume it but it's everywhere all the time now.
I should add that this isn't meant to dismiss the kind of stress that I think is unique to now. I have a stressful career and see a lot of sad and fucked up things (emergency veterinary medicine) so I am careful about dosing out what I take in from the internet. Not in a "avoid at all costs" kind of way, but it can really impact my own mental health.
I should clarify, I was mostly OK after. It's not necessarily a traumatic memory, just a very vivid one. I do worry for the kids who were younger than me though.
Kia kaha, Ross. As a fellow mental health practitioner, I want to acknowledge and thank you for all you do. It’s not easy and counsellors and therapists often come from backgrounds that can lead them to give too much of themselves to feel acceptable and loveable.
I have been ruminating in this problem for a while too. We are conducting a grand psycho-social experiment with modern digital media and the guardrails are inadequate and it’s being driven by capitalist incentives.
Humans are wired to pay attention to threats - we slow down and rubber-neck at car accidents. This is a survival mechanism at work, hence why non-fiction about true crime and disasters are such a popular genre.
One way to look at PTSD is not as a disorder, but an evolved survival mechanism. To prevent being emotionally overwhelmed in the moment, we disassociate and file those memories differently so we can survive. Later, when we seem psychologically safer, a deep part of the mind says ‘I need to understand that dangerous thing’ and the intrusive flashbacks start. On one level, this is the mind trying to heal and re-integrate a survival message. But the process can go awry and a therapist can help it proceed to conclusion more efficiently.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless about our grand social experiment. I get that way at times too.
At the heart of what gives me hope is the concept of anti-fragility which is a shift in how we think about resilience. Anti-fragile systems respond to stress and trauma and don’t just bounce back, but get stronger. All healing professionals (mental or physical) have to navigate that journey to stay in this work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility
It’s true that humans did not evolve to cope with the sheer amount of exposure to psychological stress and trauma that our digital world opens us up too. We do need to figure out better ways to self-manage the flood. Often it’s taking what already works and doing it more. Sharing our stress and pain with empathic others is the way. Trauma is traumatic because we feel alone with it.
To my mind, Webworm is an example of a digital trauma healing system which is self-organising to do exactly that.
If you’re wanting to dig into the application of anti-fragility to the domain of psychological stress and trauma, it’s the concept of post-traumatic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_growth
Where I often refer to this is my work is with people who’ve experienced significant trauma for being different. As a result of that stigma, they often perceive that they are somehow weaker than others. What they often don’t appreciate is that once those wounds have healed, they are well on the way to being actually stronger and more resilient than people who have not had their identity contested in this way - yet.
They have a head start on becoming fully themselves and fully human.
Hrrm... should I add this topic to my list of things to write a substack about?
Added to the list for when I’ve finished my sadism series. And well met fellow neurodiverse traveller. I have ADHD and identify as queer too and have wonderful autistic whanau, some of whom likely have AuDHD. Neurotypical clinicians used to think of ADHD and Autism as opposites but we know now that they are an overlapping continuum. Nature doesn’t really do binaries.
Mea culpa. My comments keep wanting to turn into essays. It’s partly why I started by own substack. 🤓
Since it relates to my exploration of cruelty and the digital problem of online trolling and how to increase our resilience and find ways to combat it, this might be helpful:
Yes to all of this (also a trauma therapist). Another thing I recommend to people who can’t bear to give themselves a complete break is to choose the format in which they view information e.g. rather than completely unfiltered horrific images via social media, keeping up to date via regulated journalistic sources who still provide relevant information without the intensity of the vicarious traumatisation.
Needed this, thank you. Hasan Minhaj (I think in an episode of Patriot Act?) back in ~2020 had a great reminder about this, how it can be absolutely overwhelming and hard to try not to care about everything, but that we need to take care of ourselves. The existential dilemma. Also reminds me of my favorite quote from season 1 of White Lotus "What does it matter what we think? If we think the right things or the wrong things? We all do the same shit. We’re all still parasites on the Earth. There’s no virtuous person when we’re all eating the last fish and throwing all our plastic crap in the ocean. Like a billion animals died in Australia during the fires. A billion. Where does all the pain go?"
I think about that a lot... Where does all the pain go?
I think a question should be "what do we learn from this?".
In the US we like our history and our day to day sanitized. Some schools in the south teach that enslaved persons chose to live in the United States for work training purposes. Perhaps they could stand to look at some recreations and read some first hand accounts.
President Eisenhower insisted on documentation of Holocaust camps to lessen the denials of the atrocities.
Some things need to be recorded and taught to future generations.
Thank you David and Ross for a compelling piece. Witnessing what’s going on around us is important. I’m not sure if it changes anything though. Look at what’s going on in Gaza, knowing has not halted the deaths. The world is shifting evermore to the right. is knowing what happened in Germany in the lead up to WW2 going to stop us having another go around as this shift plays out? I don’t understand why we as a species keep repeating the bad in our history
Seeing Israel (backed by America, always) continue its assault on so many innocent people, despite what we know, is so, so horrific. Agreed.
One thing that witnessing things can do, I think, is rally people towards giving resources and money to aid organisations. The assault goes on - yes, but being aware can trigger people to send cash and that does have real world helpful outcomes. That is one aspect that sits in the back of my mind.
I understand this position but what I have seen and am concerned a lot about it is by elevating a lot of the graphic images (of all sorts of things) are we actually mostly either traumatizing people into freeze response or worse - perpetuating the rotten era entertainment industry/helping a lot of bad actors recruit into various violent internet cult/militia type orgs...which feels like a crazy thing to type but is a thing that is also happening....
Thank you for this. Ross, your piece and especially your thoughts on compassion fatigue and feeling powerless in the face of suffering were something I needed to read right this moment. This past year has been filled with so much deep personal loss, and I have found myself turning to, not extreme imagery, but extreme book subjects. Every night I have been staying up super late (like till sunrise) reading what my wife calls my "upsetting books" - works of non fiction about war, poverty, death, abuse, cults - if it's awful I will read it! Somehow this has been comforting (and of course upsetting) - stupidly having it reiterated on paper that I am not alone in feeling so bad and that terrible things happen everywhere. Maybe this is a small reason that people look at horrible visuals, also? Or maybe I am just insane. Who knows!
I'm so glad to hear this was useful. I just finished a book on the Challenger disaster and my husband regularly takes the piss out of me for reading grim stuff so I know where you're coming from. One of the things I take from these books though, is the analysis of who tries to stop disasters, what works, what systemic and individual mistakes cause them etc. Every time I take some comfort that there are always people doing something. There's always action before and after.
Oof, this. History I can handle, even when grim. There's something to learn, and you've got the separation of time to provide important context and emotional distance.
This needs to be talked about more. We all know we live in a world in which we are told everyone should know everything about what is going on. There is a weird type of guilt that washes over even me at times when I have turned off to the world. I say even me because I talk about being Gothic all the dam time, a way to describe the perspective of a Goth is "everything is fucked, but there is bueaty in it". I spent my life desperately trying to find the beauty. There is another new type of guilt that the internet has created, which is when you are a victim/survivor are you doing enough to raise awareness? This is very loud in one of my personal online spaces which is the dissociative Identity disorder and complex PTSD community. There is this constant pressure to 'raise awareness'. But the 'intent' of some of the people doing this is a concern. The loudness of needing to be informed is louder than my personal need to heal from burnout, which is silly when said outloud. I have worked really hard to train the AI on Tiktok to only show me funny animals or funny people. I need tiny glimmers to cope. I can't switch off completely as in too deep, but an animal doing something daft goes a long way in a weird time out compromise.
I bear witness to others pain in my work every day in a forensic psychiatric service, and outside of work with sharing the experiences of friends and family. Pain comes in all shapes and sizes it seems to me. I am aware of what is happening in other countries by subscribing to multiple mainstream media sources in NZ and overseas. I avoid exposure to too much visual horror. I give money every month to Red Cross, Red Crescent, KidsCan, UNICEF, Save the Children, Women's Refuge and Give A Little fundraisers, and to friends who need things, and to glorious CAFCA which reveals the raw belly of capitalism in NZ . I hope my money goes to the poor people who are being terrorised, rather than the CEO salaries. The tithing makes me feel I am at least doing something to help. Not enough of course, never enough, but we are all just flotsam and jetsam being tossed around on a sea of insanity, with no real control over what is happening to us or around us, just fortunate if we are in a part of the sea where storms are not prevalent at present.
Thank you so much for sharing Ross Palethorpe's segment. I am someone who has to shield myself to some extent or I will absolutely drown. This really hit home for me and it's something that I actively have to remind myself of daily:
"We can’t be on the front line all the time. Reconnecting with ourselves and those around us in meaningful ways, doing something actively positive for others, uninstalling whatever app is causing the most harm for a few days. Granting ourselves the chance to be more than an observer. "
It's honestly why I try to just be the kindest I can be to those around me. It's my small contribution to the chaos.
I'm struggling with this one. I also find myself needing to take breaks from seeing atrocities for the sake of my mental health, and tune back in when I can again. I think this peice misses what a massive privilege it is to be able to do that. To just check out when things start to feel too heavy. While I agree that for the sake of continuing to live life not haunted by images of exploded children, looking away can be the best course of action, we need to be very aware that for the people these atrocities are happening to, it's not an option.
This is something that I think about a lot, in a variety of contexts. I'd like to think we understand the need for breaks from distressing material (and appropriate support) to professionals working in the fields of, say, preventing CSA, or feel anger at reports of poorly paid Facebook content moderators being exploited and traumatised watching endless content of abuse and torture. So why do we find it so hard to extend that compassion to ourselves?
It's something I wrestled with on this as I was reading/talking to Ross about it as well. It's a huge privilege to be able to switch off. There are some people I almost feel like should be bombarded with these images just to show the reality of their stance. But for a lot of people who already sympathetic, inflicting vicarious trauma on themselves or even getting PTSD might end up making their activism less effective rather than more.
The struggle to not feel guilty about self-care is a known phenomenon in counsellors and therapists and relates to our upbringing and what made us want to be healers in the first place - we were born more emotionally sensitive than others (neurodiversity at work) and became the ‘rescuers’ in our families of origin, ignoring our needs and giving of ourselves to get love. I recommend Karen Maroda’s book ‘The Analyst’s Vulnerability’ to anyone working in this field. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1032040831
Ironically, her own son Martin says that Alice was herself an example of the kind of parent she criticises. That doesn’t fault her analysis and possibly adds to why she had the dark insight she did. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980668949
Absolutely, I'm not saying that we should never pause or take a step back. Just that to be able to write from this perspective inherently holds a lot of privilege and should be acknowledged.
I think the key consideration is what helps you help. Personally, i find imagery too confrontating. It stays with me, often for years. I read a lot instead as i still want to be informed and to make sure I provide "clicks" to good journalism that tells the stories we need to hear. I also want to be aware of things I could do to support- protest, donate etc
Something i think about a bit is what do I need to be called to action and often its just some level of knowledge. I didnt need to watch hours of footage to know that i wanted to become a red cross refugee support volunteer, i dont need to see all the climate related Netflix docos to be encouraged to give time to DOC in my holidays.
I guess its understanding as an individual how you use the information and how much of it you need to support any action you might like to take.
If you cant take action, its too far away, its too much in the scheme of your life right now, its also important to give yourself genuine permission to disconnect, as Ross talks to.
Burning yourself out feeling sad and powerless is a recipe for mental illness and you deserve to be able to enjoy your own experience of life in parallel with others sadly not being able to. Life absolutely is not fair and we all need to find our own way of living with that, where we can still feel that we meaningfully contribute to lifting up and acknowledging the pain and suffering of others. But in a sustainable way that considers us as important considerations too.
Sorry and just to note that i appreciate the huge privilege i have in my life that i have time to dedicate to initiatives. I worked for years to get myself into a position where longer form volunteering commitments were a possibility and i know they are absolutely not for many.
Any efforts that are positive and feel meaningful to you, while supporting others are amazing and for everyone that looks absolutely different, which is fine and great ❤
I recognise this. I know I pull back when the news is too horrific. I understand the importance of good connections, my dog, being in nature and listening to music to bring light to dark times. I don’t use social media to explore the darkness.
I have a friend who starts every day focused on Gaza and all that that means. I want to share this with her. She is losing herself to the grief in Palestine. She is a committed, caring person but she is being overwhelmed.
Wow. What an incredible articulation of a topic that I'm sure many of us have rolled around in our noggins before (or are currently).
I'm a mental health professional and this has given me not only language but the realization that I've had better boundaries with my work life (where I see some really horrific shit) than I have with what I consume on social media.
Brb, going delete my apps.
I have been looking for a way to write about this for awhile; thankfully I found Ross and he was able to absolutely nail it.
seriously ty Ross!!
I remember reading an account of how, after an oil rig disaster, survivors were able to speak to a therapist. Many of them went on to process the event and not develop PTSD. The therapist they talked to, though, who was not present for the disaster, *did* develop PTSD. Mental health professionals have such difficult jobs, but such important ones 💖
Yes! Sometimes I feel like it's almost a reflex to check social media. I've started signing out of my accounts when I feel stressed because I'll absentmindedly go to Twitter or Instagram almost without realizing.
I came here to say pretty much exactly this! Well said.
I have OCD of the type where it shunts horrific images and scenarios in horrendous clarity into my head at any time of day. Due to this, I make the choice to avoid images and videos I know will be fed into my brain goblin and regurgitated to me with the faces of my loved ones, particularly my five year old son, attached. It makes me feel guilty that I can't bear witness to the atrocities happening, but I'm not sure traumatising and triggering myself would be of any particular help to anyone. I can still feel empathy and agony for the plight of these people without watching every video of children ripped apart. I feel guilty because these people experiencing these things cannot choose not to witness it, cannot choose to escape it, cannot choose not to press play on a video on social media. But perhaps, watching that video is not a helpful action in of itself, it is about what we choose to do with the knowledge that terrible things are happening and figuring out how we can help - whether that be talking to people IRL, donating to fundraisers, sharing gofundmes, attending protests, signing petitions... I feel like some people think that just watching the videos and looking at the images is activism all in itself. I don't think I would say it is.
I have OCD too, and mine does the SAME thing for me. The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more my brain will relay those images. It's BRUTAL. I totally agree that while realizing these atrocities are happening, we can still do the groundwork and continue to push for change while not watching the brutality ourselves.
I feel like we just have to accept the assistance that our bodies/brains are willing to give and always pushing others to do the same. This makes me hopeful.
> The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more my brain will relay those images. It's BRUTAL.
Yes, same! Sometimes I just have to focus on it and force my way through the entire thing until the end to get relief from it. It's absolutely shit. I'm sorry you experience it too 💖
My heart goes out to you both.
The important thing from my perspective is the lack of societal appreciation of our neurodiversity. Different people can see the same stimuli and have very different intensities of reaction.
While I don’t have OCD, there are certain types of news stories about awful things abusive adults visit on young children that I can’t read without it ruining my day - too close to home.
So please don’t feel guilty about not being able to meet neurotypical ‘standards’. In my experience, people with OCD suffer from too much empathy that they can’t easily turn off, not too little. Protecting yourself from vicarious traumatisation is not selfish.
*hugs*
If more people knew about this bleak reality of OCD, surely they wouldn't use the term so flippantly and take it seriously! It has made my brain a total mess and I am in awe of those who live their lives with this awful thing.
Oh, boy, I hear you re. the intrusive horrible images/memories on replay. SO much yes to all of this.
To be honest, I’ve wondered about you, David, in this exact way- you seem brave enough, or maybe well walled off enough, to regularly examine some truly heinous stuff in the news and around the world, but everyone has their point where there’s just no more space left under the rug for us to sweep our trauma. I’m glad you try to look after yourself so that you don’t get to the point of emotional overload.
I’ve been a critical care nurse for the majority of my adult life- 12 years now- and there have been a couple of occasions where I experienced truly horrific things in the course of my job, went home and thought I could just muscle through, only to find myself unable to get out of bed or focus at all the next day. I’ve skipped out on the trauma de-briefs offered by my department because I thought I should be strong enough and experienced enough in my job to not need it- I know now how naive and foolish that line of thinking was. I really enjoyed Ross’s clinical description of something I’ve experienced myself multiple times. It felt validating.
The work you do is so important, and infinite respect to you. Also, thanks for the kind words about my own brain.
I have some boundaries in place, and people to talk to and dissect things that I am *mostly* OK. But thanks for raising that; it's always something I need to keep an eye on. I have a fairly strong fortitude for things, but we all have to keep an eye on ourselves and and reassess from time to time.
I had that same experience. I don’t think I needed to attend our trauma debriefs with a therapist after events on our unit (acute adol psych nurse), because I have a thick wall (not entirely healthy) but I finally went to one and started crying-totally unexpectedly. Now I go and now I do therapy.
Thanks for the feedback and the incredible work you do. It's not naive or foolish at all, I think there's such a strong cultural expectation to be able to "handle it" that we don't recognise how much it affects us.
I've often worried about what David "consumes"/is subjected to, too.
And thankyou for doing such important and meaningful work 🙏
PS the hardships that ICU nurses endure regularly , but especially through COVID was unimaginably difficult. I know a lot of ICU nurses who had to tx out after COVID.
(Just a warning, but this story is about suicide.)
The first real, visceral memory of death I have is from when I was 14. It was after school, and I went upstairs to my room to watch Animaniacs. But instead of cartoons, what was on TV was a police standoff between a man on the freeway and the LAPD. My family had just moved to Los Angeles, and it's not uncommon for standoffs and car chases to be televised there (Is this normal in other cities/countries? I feel like it isn't.) Anyway, this man had parked his truck on the freeway, and then set it ablaze with a molotov cocktail. Then he grabbed a shotgun, placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. The camera crew in the helicopter tried to back away at the last second, but it was too late and I and every other kid trying to watch cartoons that day saw a man kill himself on live TV. Ask me anything else about that day, and I wouldn't be able to tell you. But I have a very clear memory of the moment of that man's death nearly 30 years later.
There's a Wikipedia article about him, Daniel Jones. He was HIV positive and suffering from cancer, and he was angry about the treatment he was receiving from his insurance company. There was some tut-tutting in the media about breaking into children's programming to air a deadly standoff, but they're still doing it to this day. If it bleeds it leads, I guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_V._Jones
Horrific. Animaniacs replaced by that. The whole obsession here in the US of following police chases is just so... ugh. Policing as entertainment. And then stories like what you just told. I am so sorry.
And thanks for linking to the man - the real person behind this bit of "entertainment" the channel was going for.
"Jones was born on April 15, 1958, and was from Long Beach, California. He worked as a maintenance worker at the Renaissance Hotel in Long Beach, a job he had been employed at since 1995. He lived in a small two-bedroom bungalow off an alleyway in Long Beach. He lived alone with his pet dog Gladdis, a seven-year-old Labrador-whippet mixed-breed."
Yep. He's much more remembered for how he died than why he was angry in the first place. Says it all really.
Weirdly I have two strong childhood memories about televised car chases, the other being the OJ Bronco chase in 1994. I specifically remember it was on a Friday because the coverage pre-emptied my favorite Friday night sitcoms, and I annoyed they were still covering it when he was just sitting in his driveway. Fortunately this time no one was hurt (on live TV at least).
Same. It's difficult to explain something like this, say to a coworker half my age-I'm 42, and how profound and completely fucked it was to see on TV in the middle of the afternoon when I got home from school. The internet and 24 hour news cycle is never not bombarding us with tragic and very horrific shit. Like, is the impact the same now as it was then? We have a little more choice in how much we consume it but it's everywhere all the time now.
I should add that this isn't meant to dismiss the kind of stress that I think is unique to now. I have a stressful career and see a lot of sad and fucked up things (emergency veterinary medicine) so I am careful about dosing out what I take in from the internet. Not in a "avoid at all costs" kind of way, but it can really impact my own mental health.
I am so, so sorry you had to see that.
Thank you.
I should clarify, I was mostly OK after. It's not necessarily a traumatic memory, just a very vivid one. I do worry for the kids who were younger than me though.
Kia kaha, Ross. As a fellow mental health practitioner, I want to acknowledge and thank you for all you do. It’s not easy and counsellors and therapists often come from backgrounds that can lead them to give too much of themselves to feel acceptable and loveable.
I have been ruminating in this problem for a while too. We are conducting a grand psycho-social experiment with modern digital media and the guardrails are inadequate and it’s being driven by capitalist incentives.
Humans are wired to pay attention to threats - we slow down and rubber-neck at car accidents. This is a survival mechanism at work, hence why non-fiction about true crime and disasters are such a popular genre.
One way to look at PTSD is not as a disorder, but an evolved survival mechanism. To prevent being emotionally overwhelmed in the moment, we disassociate and file those memories differently so we can survive. Later, when we seem psychologically safer, a deep part of the mind says ‘I need to understand that dangerous thing’ and the intrusive flashbacks start. On one level, this is the mind trying to heal and re-integrate a survival message. But the process can go awry and a therapist can help it proceed to conclusion more efficiently.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless about our grand social experiment. I get that way at times too.
At the heart of what gives me hope is the concept of anti-fragility which is a shift in how we think about resilience. Anti-fragile systems respond to stress and trauma and don’t just bounce back, but get stronger. All healing professionals (mental or physical) have to navigate that journey to stay in this work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility
It’s true that humans did not evolve to cope with the sheer amount of exposure to psychological stress and trauma that our digital world opens us up too. We do need to figure out better ways to self-manage the flood. Often it’s taking what already works and doing it more. Sharing our stress and pain with empathic others is the way. Trauma is traumatic because we feel alone with it.
To my mind, Webworm is an example of a digital trauma healing system which is self-organising to do exactly that.
Hell of a comment, Paul.
I'm most familiar with antifragility in the context of business and management. I'm excited to dig into this application.
If you’re wanting to dig into the application of anti-fragility to the domain of psychological stress and trauma, it’s the concept of post-traumatic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_growth
Where I often refer to this is my work is with people who’ve experienced significant trauma for being different. As a result of that stigma, they often perceive that they are somehow weaker than others. What they often don’t appreciate is that once those wounds have healed, they are well on the way to being actually stronger and more resilient than people who have not had their identity contested in this way - yet.
They have a head start on becoming fully themselves and fully human.
Hrrm... should I add this topic to my list of things to write a substack about?
Ah, so I am intimately familiar with this concept (autistic, ADHD, OCD, queer, etc.) but less so on the theory.
Definitely add to your list! I realized I missed a handful of your posts and am going to catch up. :)
Added to the list for when I’ve finished my sadism series. And well met fellow neurodiverse traveller. I have ADHD and identify as queer too and have wonderful autistic whanau, some of whom likely have AuDHD. Neurotypical clinicians used to think of ADHD and Autism as opposites but we know now that they are an overlapping continuum. Nature doesn’t really do binaries.
Mea culpa. My comments keep wanting to turn into essays. It’s partly why I started by own substack. 🤓
Since it relates to my exploration of cruelty and the digital problem of online trolling and how to increase our resilience and find ways to combat it, this might be helpful:
https://www.traces-of-therapy.com/p/the-trolls-playground
I'm absolutely here for everything from the fifteen word comments to the essay-length comments.
Me too. Webworm is a rare gem in that regard.
Yes to all of this (also a trauma therapist). Another thing I recommend to people who can’t bear to give themselves a complete break is to choose the format in which they view information e.g. rather than completely unfiltered horrific images via social media, keeping up to date via regulated journalistic sources who still provide relevant information without the intensity of the vicarious traumatisation.
Needed this, thank you. Hasan Minhaj (I think in an episode of Patriot Act?) back in ~2020 had a great reminder about this, how it can be absolutely overwhelming and hard to try not to care about everything, but that we need to take care of ourselves. The existential dilemma. Also reminds me of my favorite quote from season 1 of White Lotus "What does it matter what we think? If we think the right things or the wrong things? We all do the same shit. We’re all still parasites on the Earth. There’s no virtuous person when we’re all eating the last fish and throwing all our plastic crap in the ocean. Like a billion animals died in Australia during the fires. A billion. Where does all the pain go?"
I think about that a lot... Where does all the pain go?
I think a question should be "what do we learn from this?".
In the US we like our history and our day to day sanitized. Some schools in the south teach that enslaved persons chose to live in the United States for work training purposes. Perhaps they could stand to look at some recreations and read some first hand accounts.
President Eisenhower insisted on documentation of Holocaust camps to lessen the denials of the atrocities.
Some things need to be recorded and taught to future generations.
Thank you David and Ross for a compelling piece. Witnessing what’s going on around us is important. I’m not sure if it changes anything though. Look at what’s going on in Gaza, knowing has not halted the deaths. The world is shifting evermore to the right. is knowing what happened in Germany in the lead up to WW2 going to stop us having another go around as this shift plays out? I don’t understand why we as a species keep repeating the bad in our history
Seeing Israel (backed by America, always) continue its assault on so many innocent people, despite what we know, is so, so horrific. Agreed.
One thing that witnessing things can do, I think, is rally people towards giving resources and money to aid organisations. The assault goes on - yes, but being aware can trigger people to send cash and that does have real world helpful outcomes. That is one aspect that sits in the back of my mind.
I understand this position but what I have seen and am concerned a lot about it is by elevating a lot of the graphic images (of all sorts of things) are we actually mostly either traumatizing people into freeze response or worse - perpetuating the rotten era entertainment industry/helping a lot of bad actors recruit into various violent internet cult/militia type orgs...which feels like a crazy thing to type but is a thing that is also happening....
Thank you for this. Ross, your piece and especially your thoughts on compassion fatigue and feeling powerless in the face of suffering were something I needed to read right this moment. This past year has been filled with so much deep personal loss, and I have found myself turning to, not extreme imagery, but extreme book subjects. Every night I have been staying up super late (like till sunrise) reading what my wife calls my "upsetting books" - works of non fiction about war, poverty, death, abuse, cults - if it's awful I will read it! Somehow this has been comforting (and of course upsetting) - stupidly having it reiterated on paper that I am not alone in feeling so bad and that terrible things happen everywhere. Maybe this is a small reason that people look at horrible visuals, also? Or maybe I am just insane. Who knows!
I'm so glad to hear this was useful. I just finished a book on the Challenger disaster and my husband regularly takes the piss out of me for reading grim stuff so I know where you're coming from. One of the things I take from these books though, is the analysis of who tries to stop disasters, what works, what systemic and individual mistakes cause them etc. Every time I take some comfort that there are always people doing something. There's always action before and after.
Looking for the helpers.
that book was SO GOOD. I really enjoyed it. maybe we should start a Depressing Books Book Club lol
Oof, this. History I can handle, even when grim. There's something to learn, and you've got the separation of time to provide important context and emotional distance.
This needs to be talked about more. We all know we live in a world in which we are told everyone should know everything about what is going on. There is a weird type of guilt that washes over even me at times when I have turned off to the world. I say even me because I talk about being Gothic all the dam time, a way to describe the perspective of a Goth is "everything is fucked, but there is bueaty in it". I spent my life desperately trying to find the beauty. There is another new type of guilt that the internet has created, which is when you are a victim/survivor are you doing enough to raise awareness? This is very loud in one of my personal online spaces which is the dissociative Identity disorder and complex PTSD community. There is this constant pressure to 'raise awareness'. But the 'intent' of some of the people doing this is a concern. The loudness of needing to be informed is louder than my personal need to heal from burnout, which is silly when said outloud. I have worked really hard to train the AI on Tiktok to only show me funny animals or funny people. I need tiny glimmers to cope. I can't switch off completely as in too deep, but an animal doing something daft goes a long way in a weird time out compromise.
I bear witness to others pain in my work every day in a forensic psychiatric service, and outside of work with sharing the experiences of friends and family. Pain comes in all shapes and sizes it seems to me. I am aware of what is happening in other countries by subscribing to multiple mainstream media sources in NZ and overseas. I avoid exposure to too much visual horror. I give money every month to Red Cross, Red Crescent, KidsCan, UNICEF, Save the Children, Women's Refuge and Give A Little fundraisers, and to friends who need things, and to glorious CAFCA which reveals the raw belly of capitalism in NZ . I hope my money goes to the poor people who are being terrorised, rather than the CEO salaries. The tithing makes me feel I am at least doing something to help. Not enough of course, never enough, but we are all just flotsam and jetsam being tossed around on a sea of insanity, with no real control over what is happening to us or around us, just fortunate if we are in a part of the sea where storms are not prevalent at present.
Thank you so much for sharing Ross Palethorpe's segment. I am someone who has to shield myself to some extent or I will absolutely drown. This really hit home for me and it's something that I actively have to remind myself of daily:
"We can’t be on the front line all the time. Reconnecting with ourselves and those around us in meaningful ways, doing something actively positive for others, uninstalling whatever app is causing the most harm for a few days. Granting ourselves the chance to be more than an observer. "
It's honestly why I try to just be the kindest I can be to those around me. It's my small contribution to the chaos.
I'm struggling with this one. I also find myself needing to take breaks from seeing atrocities for the sake of my mental health, and tune back in when I can again. I think this peice misses what a massive privilege it is to be able to do that. To just check out when things start to feel too heavy. While I agree that for the sake of continuing to live life not haunted by images of exploded children, looking away can be the best course of action, we need to be very aware that for the people these atrocities are happening to, it's not an option.
This is something that I think about a lot, in a variety of contexts. I'd like to think we understand the need for breaks from distressing material (and appropriate support) to professionals working in the fields of, say, preventing CSA, or feel anger at reports of poorly paid Facebook content moderators being exploited and traumatised watching endless content of abuse and torture. So why do we find it so hard to extend that compassion to ourselves?
It's something I wrestled with on this as I was reading/talking to Ross about it as well. It's a huge privilege to be able to switch off. There are some people I almost feel like should be bombarded with these images just to show the reality of their stance. But for a lot of people who already sympathetic, inflicting vicarious trauma on themselves or even getting PTSD might end up making their activism less effective rather than more.
The struggle to not feel guilty about self-care is a known phenomenon in counsellors and therapists and relates to our upbringing and what made us want to be healers in the first place - we were born more emotionally sensitive than others (neurodiversity at work) and became the ‘rescuers’ in our families of origin, ignoring our needs and giving of ourselves to get love. I recommend Karen Maroda’s book ‘The Analyst’s Vulnerability’ to anyone working in this field. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1032040831
Of course, it’s not just counsellors and therapists. I suspect it’s true of a particular breed of journalists too and other humans as well. Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child explores it well. https://www.amazon.com/Drama-Gifted-Child-Search-Third/dp/0465016901
Ironically, her own son Martin says that Alice was herself an example of the kind of parent she criticises. That doesn’t fault her analysis and possibly adds to why she had the dark insight she did. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980668949
Absolutely, I'm not saying that we should never pause or take a step back. Just that to be able to write from this perspective inherently holds a lot of privilege and should be acknowledged.
Indeed, that is a psychological luxury that is not shared equally. I think we're in violent agreement on that :-)
I think the key consideration is what helps you help. Personally, i find imagery too confrontating. It stays with me, often for years. I read a lot instead as i still want to be informed and to make sure I provide "clicks" to good journalism that tells the stories we need to hear. I also want to be aware of things I could do to support- protest, donate etc
Something i think about a bit is what do I need to be called to action and often its just some level of knowledge. I didnt need to watch hours of footage to know that i wanted to become a red cross refugee support volunteer, i dont need to see all the climate related Netflix docos to be encouraged to give time to DOC in my holidays.
I guess its understanding as an individual how you use the information and how much of it you need to support any action you might like to take.
If you cant take action, its too far away, its too much in the scheme of your life right now, its also important to give yourself genuine permission to disconnect, as Ross talks to.
Burning yourself out feeling sad and powerless is a recipe for mental illness and you deserve to be able to enjoy your own experience of life in parallel with others sadly not being able to. Life absolutely is not fair and we all need to find our own way of living with that, where we can still feel that we meaningfully contribute to lifting up and acknowledging the pain and suffering of others. But in a sustainable way that considers us as important considerations too.
Sorry and just to note that i appreciate the huge privilege i have in my life that i have time to dedicate to initiatives. I worked for years to get myself into a position where longer form volunteering commitments were a possibility and i know they are absolutely not for many.
Any efforts that are positive and feel meaningful to you, while supporting others are amazing and for everyone that looks absolutely different, which is fine and great ❤
"what helps you help" is such a great way to put it!
I recognise this. I know I pull back when the news is too horrific. I understand the importance of good connections, my dog, being in nature and listening to music to bring light to dark times. I don’t use social media to explore the darkness.
I have a friend who starts every day focused on Gaza and all that that means. I want to share this with her. She is losing herself to the grief in Palestine. She is a committed, caring person but she is being overwhelmed.