Syria Generational Impact

I find it very difficult not to look away from the television when the horror of Aleppo, Syria Generational Impact. The trauma that is being forced onto the children is so hard to look at. When I say ‘look away’ I mean in every sense: visually, emotionally, physically. I have to detach myself from my own vicarious experience of the pain those children are enduring.

Physical pain is one thing; it heals. However the mental anguish of unrequited loss when parents and siblings are wiped out causes me the greatest sadness. This despair, anger and rage at the duplicity and inhumanity of those causing this utterly unimaginable suffering is hard to swallow.

As a psychotherapist I am conscious of the consequences in later life of the trauma. How will their internal confusion ever be healed. The loss, anger and grief may all be internalised. They will be affected in their relationships for the rest of their lives; how will they be able to parent their children when they have no parents from which to learn the skills of caring love, compassion, security. How can they do anything else other than dissociate.

And all because there are evil people in this world, who themselves have no compassion in the face of worldwide condemnation. Putin and Assad I hope one day will be answerable in this world or the next; and the latter cannot come too soon for those two.