Anxiety? PTSD? Or a Case of The Cassandra Complex?
When a Personal Trauma History Intersects With the Current Rise in Global Antisemitism
I told my new psychotherapist, David, how I’m doing, which is not so great.
“I sit down to write each day, but my head spins. I can’t keep up with all that has happened over the last few weeks: Iran’s direct attack on Israel, further antisemitism in the literary community, and protests at Columbia University. It’s all too much.”
David empathized. Then he challenged me, “It’s your anxiety. These are symptoms of PTSD.”
The PTSD to which he referred has nothing to do with Israel, but I developed immediate symptoms following October 7th. During sleepless nights, I paced around the living room, my heart racing. It felt as if a band were wrapped around my chest, and someone kept pulling it, trying to suffocate me. My head pulsed. I suffered muscle spasms in my limbs but also in my core. I didn’t blame any of this on panic. I didn’t want to accept that my mental health was in decline.
Buried beneath my denial, a part of me suspected the inevitable: I’d need to return to therapy. Since my previous therapist retired in 2019, my resistance was great. To find a new person seemed an insurmountable task. Eventually, sheer desperation outweighed reluctance: I couldn’t stop the intrusive images that have invaded my mind since October 7th.
Every time I see someone applauding Hamas as freedom fighters, I see myself and my family getting raped and dismembered. We were supposed to be in Israel for the month of October, and I’d wanted to stay on a kibbutz. I’ve already written about how the arthritis in my hip might’ve saved our lives.
When I see a Facebook friend “contextualize” the massacre, it feels personal. Anxiety pushes me past appropriate empathy for the actual victims of that day. My mental boundaries collapse. I see what could’ve been, and it replays in my mind. Over and over again. But that is the point of terrorism. Victimization extends beyond the center, reaching outer orbits too.
The task of finding a competent therapist is never easy, but how would I determine whether a potential provider was antisemitic? Or anti-Zionist? As it happens, the field of psychoanalysis had suffered a fracture over Israel prior to the events of October 7th. You can read about that here.
I ended up getting a referral from my rabbi and first met with David, a Jewish psychologist, a week prior to my recent hip replacement. His background includes work with Holocaust survivors, so I figured I’d feel safe. I cannot recall any previous time in life where I felt the need to screen someone’s identity as a prerequisite for care.
As I sat on David’s couch for the first time, I berated myself for having so much anxiety about my upcoming surgery. I did brain surgery during the pandemic. My husband dropped me off at the hospital door—no one was allowed to accompany me or visit me afterward. And I’d kept calm. This angst over my hip didn’t make sense.
It was only later that evening that it hit me: My orthopedic surgeon, at least according to the sound of his name, is not a Jew. I’d selected him prior to October 7th. I wanted to cancel. What if he hates Israelis? I worried again after the nurse, during my pre-operative visit, asked where my husband was from. She’d heard him speaking in Hebrew on his cell phone. I almost lied.
“He’s from Israel,” I said, while watching her face for signs of contempt.
The nurse expressed immediate sympathy. While that provided some relief, I couldn’t shake the sheer mind-fuck Jews and/or Israelis now face. There is no more easy interaction with the world at large.
A few friends have challenged my desire to convert in the face of so much antisemitism. Am I behaving recklessly?
It wouldn’t matter. I’m already three decades deep in marriage. My children have dual citizenship. They are Israeli too.
But also: I feel the liminality of my identity. Though I’ve felt Jewish for years now, I am also aware of the space between myself and those who grew up in Jewish families. People who have inherited the intergenerational trauma of being Jews.
From my perspective, every Jewish person is having a trauma response right now, whether they realize it or not. Am I exercising some major chutzpah by saying this? Probably. I stand by my gut instinct regardless.
Trauma responses vary.
Some Jewish friends express gratitude for my public support of Israel. When I changed my background photo on Facebook to the flag of Israel, several friends said they wanted to do the same but were too afraid. Their anxiety causes them to hide.
Other Jews minimize things. This is how it always is.
My friend, Olga, put it this way: “You feel anxious because you lack the intergenerational scab that protects us from suffering ongoing stress.”
I’ve also observed some Jews pivot away from their identity. One Jewish writer made her anti-Zionist stance public on social media. But she’s had to keep doing it. I don’t share her perspective—I am a Zionist, meaning I support the right of Israel to exist—but when I see the necessity of her ongoing anti-Zionist declarations, I realize that “even this” is not enough to protect her against antisemitism.
Some Jews respond like warriors. They don’t hide or minimize or fawn. They speak up. There is Columbia University professor, Shai Davidai. The actor, Michael Rappaport, has supported Jews with an active presence on social media. In the literary community, some brave souls include writers Erika Dreifus and Elissa Wald.
What informs any given person’s trauma response to antisemitism? I think about this while trying to refrain from judgment, but I have a hard time empathizing with those who fawn. My most dominant trauma response is to fight. Even as a child, when I endured multiple forms of abuse at the hands of my drug-addicted father, I fought back. My mother tried to protect me. Be quiet. Your mouth makes it worse. I never took her advice. My rage-fueled indignation could not be contained.
This is another reason I could never do Christianity. The mandate to “turn the other cheek” doesn’t work for me. I’m too fiery.
An interesting feature of my rage: it grows most fierce in the presence of bystanders. This is true across all kinds of situations. Let me explain with some examples:
In the case of child sex abusers, it is well understood how they groom entire communities, not only their individual victims. For reasons I don’t quite understand, my rage for the complicit bystander exceeds my rage for the sex offenders themselves.
In childhood, the cruelty of a single bully caused outrage, but my ultimate fury was reserved for the silent witnesses or those who joined the bully in an obvious strategy of self-preservation.
In the current situation, my hatred for radical Islamic leaders and their terrorist proxies is enormous. My dislike of Netanyahu is great. But my rage toward the pro-Hamas protesters here and in other Western nations is unprecedented.
But why?
I crave self-understanding, so I brought it up in therapy. David suggested a link to my personal trauma history. That perhaps I’ve internalized some self-hate for failing to prevent my own abuse (abused children often blame themselves). Maybe my unconscious defense against feeling this self-hatred is to project it onto other people, people I deem complicit in harming others.
I suppose it’s possible that I’m projecting some split-off (thus unconscious) primitive self-state onto bystanders. But I doubted David’s hypothesis immediately. I’ve never felt complicit in my abuse. I’ve suffered feelings of being contaminated by said abuse, but I’ve never felt deserving of it.
Perhaps this is atypical for someone who’s survived severe early trauma, but I also think I’ve “beat the odds” given the expected trajectory for someone with an ACE score as high as mine. I’ve enjoyed a long and happy marriage across three decades and maintain many meaningful friendships. I participate in numerous activities and am an active member of society. I do think my physical body has aged more quickly than my average peers. Even my bloodwork always shows high inflammatory markers. Moreover, my stress response can be hard to modulate depending on the situation. But I think I’m surviving quite well, despite the ongoing challenges.
Also, I’ve never felt ineffective in terms of my own survival. I remember my childhood self as resourceful—4th grade me was more innovative than I’ll ever be. She was amazing. If anything, I experienced myself as too powerful (at age 14, I wished my father would die, and nine hours later, he did).
How do I explain this fury toward bystanders, especially those who join the parade blindly, as if they’re attending a party, the social inclusion an opportunity for bonding?
I cannot figure myself out.
When I see people express vitriol toward Israel, the kind that is not legitimate criticism of Netanyahu’s government but an outright call for Israel’s obliteration, I am overcome with rage. That everyone else appears calmer than I do only serves to increase my fury.
It strikes me now, as I write this, that my rage also rises under less threatening circumstances.
One example involves a very famous author who I’ll refer to as the “VFA.” This writer’s published work demonstrates massive intellect and an ability to navigate complexity. I was a huge fan. But on X (Twitter), she tweets demonizing statements about Israel. She has never tweeted about October 7th. I couldn’t refrain from commenting on one of her threads. She then tweeted something about needing to look into my soul, and I admit she must be morally superior to me, because I wanted to punch my fist through the phone and clobber her head.
In that moment, I hated her more severely than the Hamas terrorists—they are born into an ideology. They get indoctrinated in hatred against Jews. What excuse does the VFA have? A desire to conform with the trending literary community?
To my knowledge, the VFA, unlike Israelis, has no real experience of living alongside constant existential threat. Did the world notice every time a rocket fell in Israel? No, it did not. But my mother-in-law survived a near hit just a few years ago.
Another source of my rage was the retraction of Joanna Chen’s essay from Guernica magazine. The moral arrogance and privilege demonstrated by the editorial staff at Guernica fueled my anger so severely, I could probably run my car on the fumes generated by my own sweat. Read the original essay, now republished in The Washington Monthly here. The Guernica debacle is well documented. You can read about it at length. I’ll include a few links here, and here, and another one here.
Make your own determination. And then consider this: If you are an American who did not vote for Trump, do you consider yourself personally complicit in the events of the border crisis that occurred during his administration? When children were separated from parents at the border, and if it caused you to suffer any anguish, did you stifle your own voice? According to the “logic” of Guernica’s editors, you don’t deserve a voice. Your humanity is cancelled by way of your American identity. I’ve chosen this example—the border crisis—but feel free to insert any instance in which America acted in a manner you find egregious.
The literary community’s failure to empathize with more than one group of civilians generates further hatred. I know it because I feel it myself. I am not proud of this, but I don’t know how to remedy my rage. What I do know is that anger is a secondary emotion—rage manifests to hide primary feelings that are even tougher to confront. If forced to guess, I’d bet my underlying emotion is one of terror. Underneath all this anger, I am very fucking afraid.
David thinks my anxiety is too large for reality. I debated this, and I will probably debate him again. Secretly, I wonder if David’s unconscious defenses are generating too much denial. Or maybe his psychotherapeutic role forces some false optimism.
According to my reasoning, the collective picture is grim.
Other democracies, all of them flawed, get criticized, but do their Western “friends” protest against their very right to exist? No.
If college protestors threatened any other marginalized group, such as people of color or those from the LGBTQ community, would society tolerate it? No.
If another group of persons were burned alive, raped, dismembered, slaughtered, and kidnapped, would Americans parade in support of such evil? No.
So, yes. I am fucking afraid.
Maybe my exquisite rage burns against very real threats. When I wished my father would die, was I a bad person? No. I was a desperate girl, trying to survive. And I didn’t literally kill him. There’s a difference between having destructive thoughts and actually performing them. Moreover, self-defense that necessitates physical harm against one’s enemy is not equal to the October 7th massacre.
The October 7th massacre was sadistic. The Hamas terrorists enjoyed themselves. This is well documented in their footage. The sadist takes pleasure in his actions; in contrast, self-defense often leads to personal suffering, even when self-defense is warranted. Sadism is never self-defense. Sadism is not a fight for freedom. Sadism gratifies evil. Sadism lacks remorse, self-doubt, and self-reflection. To support Hamas is to support evil. When I see support for Hamas multiply around the world, I see the spread of evil.
In the meanwhile, I must work to manage my terror. I meditate, but afterward, I climb the lookout tower again. I pan a lens across the multiple domains exhibiting antisemitism. Then, I add another ingredient—that of time.
David reminds me that I’m neither a prophet nor a fortune teller. This is true, but inductive reasoning causes me to make predictions. Could David be right? Am I favoring prophecy over rational thought? But I do not feel safe. I want to make plans in case things grow even worse.
David agreed with this. He explained that his family’s passports are always up to date.
Therein lies the challenge: How does the Jewish community know when it’s time to roll? How do we discern between what is antisemitic and what is not? And at what point does antisemitism move beyond an irritant and begin to threaten our actual lives?
As a child, I fought back, but I also knew when to hide and when to run. In winter, I could fit inside the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. In summer, I could open my bedroom window and slide my body down until my feet felt the soft blades of grass rise between my toes. I fought and hid and ran. I am wired for survival.
But my personal history complicates my current diagnosis. Am I suffering the symptoms of hyperarousal and hypervigilance due to PTSD? Or is it possible that some survivors of severe trauma are better able to notice legitimate threat? Does the very structure of my trauma-formed mind elevate my threat detectors? Or cause me to ring false alarms?
When you’ve been touched by fire, do you smell fresh smoke before everybody else does? Or do you choke on fumes that aren’t real?
My Differential Diagnosis: PTSD. Anxiety. Cassandra Complex. All of the Above?
Are you feeling like Cassandra too? How many of us are out there? Share this post & help us find each other:
Thank you for reading The Holy Chutzpah & Goodnight!
Another great article. Great writing and profound.