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But the night before that horrific day, I had a beautiful gift from the universe, in the form of an interview with Dalia Halabi. If you don’t already follow her on Instagram, Dalia is a Lebanese mental health practitioner working out of Los Angeles, who has been making incredible content on social media about mental health in the Arab diaspora.

I didn’t want to reduce our conversation to a two-minute clip for social media (though please, if you don’t already, do follow Dalia on social media). So, here is the full transcript, edited and shortened slightly for clarity because I don’t want anyone who is feeling lost or misunderstood right now to miss out on a single thing that she’s saying. (If you’d like to listen, that’s an option, too!)

Coffee? Human-generated art by me!

ANNA: So you know, as you and I know very well right now, so many people in our communities, in the Arab diaspora, are kind of experiencing this very surreal feeling of worrying and checking in on loved ones, checking the news, doomscrolling, and then we’re expected to function as if nothing crazy is going on at all. What is happening to us at the nervous system level?

DALIA: A lot of people are struggling with this, and I think having the language is, in and of itself, like a form of relief. So, the first thing is that we are living through continuous traumatic stress. I know we talk a lot about post-traumatic stress, or PTSD, but the threat is still ongoing. It’s continuous. It’s not happening in isolation; there’s an entire constellation of things happening simultaneously in our bodies and our nervous system and our psyche right now.

When it comes to nervous system, specifically, what’s happening is we’re oscillating between hyper and hypo arousal. So hyper arousal is that activated state like fight and flight, where we’re constantly scanning, can’t sleep, you’re constantly checking the news, you’re unable to switch off. And then you have hypo arousal, which is that almost like dissociation, it’s a numbness, it’s just going through the motions, feeling.

For so many people, we’re kind of moving in between both of those states throughout the day. And I want to say it’s not a dysfunction, okay? It is absolutely your nervous system doing what it is designed to do in times of high stress or like a sustained threat, which is even if it doesn’t feel like that in our direct environment. It is that way in our internal world. So, there is a constant threat.

ANNA: You’ve also specifically made content around something called the “context mismatch” which I find so interesting, and such a necessary concept to understand right now. Can you explain this in more detail?

DALIA: So, your nervous system is designed to take cues from the environment, right? So that’s how we calibrate how much of a threat response is appropriate. But when you know that on your phone, your homeland is being bombed, your family is in danger, you’re you can’t switch off, because every time you check messages, you know that it’s like really bad back home, but you look up and around you, and you’re sitting at work or in a cafe in Los Angeles or London and there is no direct threat in your environment. You’re not internally registering that level of danger around you, and so that kind of feeds into the hyper vigilance that feeds into the nervous system dysregulation, because your nervous system’s like, what’s going on?

Let’s also layer on top of that the cognitive dissonance, which is, in and of itself, dysregulating as well, because it’s the neurological strain of holding two completely incompatible realities at the same time.

Don’t forget that many of us are also carrying vicarious trauma. So even if it’s not happening to us directly, we’re absorbing the suffering of other people through images, through videos, through what when our when we’re talking to our family online.

I don’t know about you, but it actually hurts my heart even more when my family sound fine, or they try to pretend like they’re fine. And you know, how could you be fine? You know what I mean? And it’s like, are you putting on a brave face for me, like, are you doing that for my benefit? And that just leads to survivor’s guilt. You know, you feel like the like on top of everything you’re going through, you feel like you have to put on the show for me, I’m here, I’m safe, I’m living my life, but you’re not.

I don’t think we are designed to carry all of this and then the pressure to perform okayness, the pressure to be normal through all of it. It’s such an expectation that is rooted in capitalism and the fact that we live in this capitalistic, individualistic society that has conditioned us to equate our worth to our output, and because we feel like if we’re struggling with productivity guilt, we have to white knuckle through the pain, just so that we can meet our deliverables and our deadlines, because that’s what’s celebrated here, you know? So, yeah, it’s just a lot of overlapping things happening all at once on an ordinary Tuesday.

ANNA: You had this great post about how Arabs don’t need an anxiety diagnosis. Thinking about that, I was wondering how a lot of what we go through on a psychological and neurological level is misunderstood in the context of often well-meaning Western therapy and mental health support.

DALIA: I want to be clear, like Western psychology has its clinical wisdom, and I hold it critically and from an informed place, I don’t want to like come across, like, I’m bashing it. But there are significant ways that it falls short for SWANA communities,

I think the most fundamental issue with Western the western approach, is orientation. I think there’s such an emphasis historically, or a preoccupation with what’s wrong with you. How do I diagnose you? So, it’s the whole system is built on diagnosing, categorizing, pathologizing. You’re trying to take an entire like experience and emotional landscape and you’re trying to reduce it to a label.

A better question to ask than what’s wrong with you is like, what systems did you have to survive? What did you have to go through? What does your pain make complete sense within? That shift is everything, because when someone walks in carrying continuous traumatic stress or intergenerational trauma or grief or survivor’s guilt or cognitive dissonance, the first thing that the system wants to do is reach for the diagnosis.

Western therapy also looks at trauma with a clear beginning and an end. But for many of us, it is intergenerational and continuous. It’s something we are still experiencing something that we are still trying to process. It hasn’t yet arrived at a resolution. When I was in grad school, I wrote a paper on the Armenian Genocide, and learned that the inter-generational trauma of that event was exasperated by the fact that it was not recognized as a genocide by the powers that be. That’s a lot like what is happening right now, there’s a collective gaslighting going on where the powers that be are not calling it what it is: a genocide.

You can’t use cognitive reframing to assuage someone’s hyper-vigilance when they have every single right and reason to be hyper vigilant, because that’s been their survival mechanism. The tools are not wrong in and of themselves, but they are insufficient.

I think a lot of Arabs or Diaspora people leave the therapy room feeling like there’s something wrong with them. I’ve experienced that myself; I have a lot of what Western therapy might call anxious thoughts or distortions. A lot of therapists will talk to me about reframing my thoughts and choosing more positive thoughts. That won’t work for me, because I can tell my brain that I’m okay and I’m safe and I’m all these things, but my body is not listening. This somatic aspect needs to be taken into account as well.

On top of that, the western approach is kind of individualistic. It looks at the at the healing journey as a solo act, instead of a collectivist, communal thing, which it is for us Arabs, we know that we heal in community, we heal in groups. We heal when we feel seen, when our pain feels recognized, when we know that the person standing in front of us knows how we feel and can relate to our emotional landscape, which I think is missing when you have like a Western therapist looking back at you and trying to tell you, “Have you considered turning off the news?”

No, honey! I can’t turn off the news because it’s how I track safety of my family. That’s well- meaning advice, but it does not work for us.

ANNA: I mean, in the absence of kind of, you know, those frameworks being caught up to many of our realities, what do you recommend, especially for people just trying to get through the day right now as functionally as possible?

DALIA: I think our cultures have so much wisdom within them as well. I do believe that there is a lot of healing power and being witnessed and being understood and being together. I was at a fundraising event for to raise money for displaced families in Lebanon, and I know so many people came to that event feeling so heavy, feeling a lot of sadness, feeling a lot of grief. And I think subconsciously, mentally, I was trying to prepare myself for the environment to be very heavy. But to my surprise, but also not surprising at all, it felt so uplifting. It felt so regulating to be in a space where I saw myself and my culture reflected in those around me. I heard my mother tongue. I know that people know how I’m feeling. I didn’t need to perform “okayness.”

There’s a level of authenticity that happens in those kinds of spaces. It becomes even more important to find those kinds of spaces when you’re living in the West, because you don’t see it in your everyday. When home feels far away, the practice becomes, how do I bring home to me? How do I connect with fellow you know, Arabs or people who get it, how do I bring up some of the traditions and the rituals that make me feel like home, like the you know, like making Arabic coffee, listening to Fairouz, reading some Darwish poetry, cooking your favorite childhood meals, the familiar sense, the familiar sounds you’re talking about, healing registering on a somatic level, especially when you are so dysregulated, using your five senses as an anchor to bring you into the present can be a very regulating practice. And so those things, the, you know, the, what are they called? The, oh, my god, like the rose water, the sense that, like, you know, some people be like smell lavender or eucalyptus--smell rose water!

Do things that bring warmth and that bring comfort, because I think there is like such an attachment to our land. I know a lot of people will say, I would rather be in Lebanon right now. I would rather be in the middle of it than be here witnessing it. It says so much about how patriotic and how much we love our land, which is why kind of bringing that and intentionally in your daily life can be also a meaningful way.

ANNA: You’ve also created a lot of content about how this kind of healing and regulation is rooted in the body. Can you break that down a bit more?

DALIA: I think all kinds of healing, especially when we’re talking about trauma, especially when we’re talking about dysregulation, needs to happen in the body first. Focus on long exhales, gentle swaying, shaking, shaking is a really great tool. Dancing. Put your favorite like dance song. Debka, belly dance—all of these are great somatic ways of moving emotions. It’s okay to be angry. This is not anger is sacred. It’s not something we’re going to pathologize or diminish or minimize. Let that anger move you into action, because in times like this, you feel very helpless or disempowered, that’s what they want you to think.

You are more powerful than you think. Even little things that you can do that give you a sense of meaning and purpose can help mobilize that anger in healthy ways, whether it’s raising awareness or volunteering or donating or protesting calling your senators and sending mail like mail to your like all of these things are ways that we can transform pain into purpose. Also find community and find a therapist that you don’t have to explain yourself to!

ANNA: Do you have any other practices or resources that you recommend?

DALIA: Honestly, this sounds weird, but art. Read poetry, things that move you, listen to music, music, music. I someone was saying the other day, the only thing getting me through this is listening to Fairouz and Abdel Halim Hafez—it makes sense. You need things that inspire you, because in times like this, you just kind of collapse into yourself.

So anything that brings you inspiration, that brings you joy, is important, and I know it feels wrong to cultivate joy, but it’s so important. There’s a theory in psychology I really love. It’s called the broaden and build theory. It says when we experience negative emotions, our our perspective collapses, it becomes almost like zoomed in, microscopic and we’re only saying what’s wrong, but when we experience positive emotions, which can be cultivated, right? We don’t need to wait for emotions to happen. We can make them happen. It broadens our perspective and it helps us build our resources.

So coming back to the idea of endurance, the more gratitude, the more joy, the more positive emotions that you can cultivate in your life, the more you’re able to fight, the more you’re able to do more to help humanity.

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