War, Terror, And Hometown Life
by Gary Siegel, CSW

While the war in Iraq has wound to a close, the threat of terror remains ever a question, and its effects on our lives is hard to measure. Many wonder just how such threats affect us here in our own hometowns. While there is no easy measure of these many and multifaceted effects, there are a few general principles we can look to in order to evaluate these effects for ourselves.

Of course the most obvious affect of all this news shows up in those people who become clearly and visibly shaken by it. They begin to worry, spend too much time thinking about it, become pessimistic about other areas of their lives. They may become more anxious, more preoccupied, and begin to spend too much energy in their focus and negative thoughts about war. But I would say that these people are in the minority. Their symptoms are a little easier to deal with because they are obvious and in the open. What is much more widespread and harder to evaluate are the broader effects that we don't realize are related to our reactions to terror, the war and uncertainty.

For many of us, the added stress and uncertainty of the current situation has a more insidious and behind the scenes effect. We see what is happening, but know there's little we can do about it and so we don't think a lot about it. We watch the news, have conversations which don't really soothe us, and we just forget about it. But what we need to understand is that many and perhaps most of us carry an overly high load of stress in our lives to begin with. You know the drill. Financial pressures are widespread. Many of us work long hours, and then are saddled with endless chores when we're "free." Sleep disturbance is epidemic. We don't eat well most of the time, and we don't often have the time to unwind and release the stress that we build up during the day. Television, which helps us feel relaxed, seems to more be a disconnect than an actual stress reliever. And so, on top of the high levels of stress just to get through our daily lives, we have an erosion of the resources that we need to cope with those stresses--sleep, good food, relaxation and discharge of tension. And this stretches to the max our coping mechanisms and our psychological resources.

So to this background let's add the war, the threats of terrorism, worries about job security, and other jitters. The threats are the same for all of us, but the way we take them in and then the way they impact upon us vary with who we are and how we process such material. I think what is most interesting is what happens when the worries and stresses both real and imagined or exaggerated go underground. That is, we don't realize that they are bothering us, and they work upon us from the inside.

Somehow, a potential threat of terrorism, or a widening war, or any other scenario that makes an impression can have some kind of resonance with an already established fear or insecurity. It brings this dormant feeling a little closer to the surface. And what this can do is lower our set point or threshold for stress, frustration, fear, and other "overwhelm responses." It might turn up as becoming a little extra agitated while standing in a slow line at the supermarket checkout, or when your spouse gives you a look that you can't stand. You may find your reaction coming just a little harder than it did the last time.

Though we often don't notice it, we are more often overloaded in times like these. And when we are overloaded, smaller issues, smaller stimuli have larger effects. We get upset more often from smaller things, and we feel kind of jagged when we have to keep switching back and forth from feeling okay and even, to feeling angry, anxious, frustrated etc. We begin to function below our best more often. A basic sense of security is just a bit undermined. We struggle more. We can say, as a rule of thumb, that the higher the level of stress, the lower the level of stability/security, or the harder we struggle to maintain it.

What Does This Mean?

When we are using all our faculties, we have our emotions, our thought processes and our social skills working in concert. Under stress, our mind may perceive things in an exaggerated way, and clarity is reduced, our emotions may be reacting to an inner felt emergency that is an exaggeration of the situation we are in. Most of us struggle more, have to push more, or more often, to "get through." We are short on resources, short on reserves.

On a bad day, or during a bad week, we may begin to be a little more negative about life. It also may be that we become less trusting of the world, less positive about life. We feel it as even more of a struggle. Some of us feel a loss of unity with our neighbors and fellow citizens since we notice the strong differences of opinion around us and there is no useful dialog that helps us bridge these differences and find common ground. The situation remains unresolved--another source of stress.

One might say that the way the war and threats of terror affect us is to increase --on a number of levels--what is already going on. Our stress load is too high, and the new anxieties make it higher, but on yet another level. That level is background stress of the category: nothing you can do about it. We are just a little more helpless, perhaps a little more estranged, and we push on.

And where does it all stand now? The war in Iraq had been declared over. As of this writing, no terrorists have struck, despite numerous warnings. For most of us, our own inner alert systems have begun to reset. With perhaps just a little added trepidation, these effects I am discussing are fading. But we have had these reactions. And the world is arguably an unstable place. We may have more challenges ahead and if we do, these reactions will spring right back, as if they had never left. It is up to all of us to maximize our own coping mechanisms.

Maximize our resources of rest, sleep, connection with friends and loved ones. And recognize, don't ignore, the "overwhelm responses" that we may be experiencing, so that we can give ourselves the best possible chances for coping and keeping the set point bar from rising too high. We can't control the ravages of the world, so we need to do our best within ourselves and our families and friends, to maintain our equilibrium.

Gary Siegel CSW is a therapist at the Rhinebeck Center for Progressive Psychotherapy