"Accumulated grief" is the term given to going through successive traumas of loss, without being able to go through enough breathing time between them (Shutterstock).
"Nothing is harder than the pain of loss, and when these pains are experienced again and again things are harder and more severe, but what can we say, this is our choice. Our destiny and we must accept it no matter what. We ask God to provide us with patience and strength so that we can continue. And to Hamza and to all the martyrs. Journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Gaza Strip, said goodbye to his eldest son Hamza, who was martyred two days ago after the Israeli bombing that targeted his car, was so moving that it shook the conscience of the world's honorable people because of the tragedy that one person would suffer all those losses and remain steadfast, and even complete what he started solidly.
"Accumulated sadness", the psychological expression given by psychologists to the successive losses and pain of loss associated with the death of close people in successive cases, in an ideal world, described by the German psychological researcher Catherine Scher, as the world in which the individual can take a breath between one sadness and another, and in which he can get a chance to recover from the trauma of loss, this does not mean that sadness disappears completely, but moves from an acute stage, which is the first flaming period, to an integrated stage in which it is possible to return to normal human activity But without him returning to the same as he was.
Journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh (right) and his father Wael Al-Dahdouh (social media)
When sadness becomes a luxury
In another world that is not characterized by the luxury of time between disasters, "accumulated sadness" becomes the expression given to going through successive traumas of loss, without the person being able to go through enough time to take a breath between them, there is no way to recover from the initial loss, until the second and third loss surprise you, and so it becomes difficult to deal with the sadness caused by each loss.
In a study on the impact of multiple losses on the feeling of sadness carried out by Dorothy L. Mercer, professor of psychology at the University of Eastern Kentucky, the study pointed out that multiple losses affect the mental, psychological and physical health of individuals and affect their relationship patterns, jobs, personalities and attachment to material things in life, and in the book "What is your sadness: lists to help you through any loss," Letsa Williams says that facing new losses is much more difficult than facing the first loss, so you seem to be fighting with half your energy and half Your ability and half your feelings.
Facing new losses is much harder than facing the first loss (Pixels)
Accumulated sadness and mountains waiting to collapse
What is happening in Gaza is that an entire people has become prey to accumulated grief, trauma that has lost the ability to survive, and with the absence of psychological support that has become a luxury amid everything that is happening.
Dr. Ali Abdel Radi, teacher of psychological first aid at Al-Azhar University, spoke to Al Jazeera Net, about the impact of repeated loss on the lives of the entire Palestinian people as an original research model for the experiences of accumulated grief, and anguish after repeated trauma, that there are two ways to face trauma appeared clearly with the recurrence of loss in recent events:
Method One: Denial
Denial, and the subsequent course of life as usual, without any clear difference, shows the individual overcoming the crisis without actually being able to face it due to his psychological fragility.
Method Two: Psychological Toughness
Psychological toughness in the face of successive losses, which we have been witnessing every day since the seventh of October, in which the person has the ability to face what he is going through consciously, and can release his sadness and separate his working life from his sorrows, no matter how big they are.
The ability to cope with grief and psychological toughness in the face of adversity are achieved when a person believes in the "meaning of life" (Shutterstock)
Therapy with meaning
Abdel Radi confirms to Al Jazeera Net the ability to face sadness and psychological hardness when facing adversity achieved when a person believes in the "meaning of life".
The professor of psychological first aid pointed out that it is strange that the school founded by one of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust, Victor Frankel, a young man who lost his entire family in the Holocaust during World War II, the Palestinian people became the most inspired people in the face of the current Holocaust, adding that the psychiatrist Frankl when he developed the concept of treatment with meaning from the heart of suffering, founding a new school of psychotherapy no less important than Freud's theories in psychoanalysis, explained to the world that finding meaning and purpose Life is the basis of an individual's motivational power that makes him able to survive even in the most miserable and suffering conditions.
Dr. Ali Abdel Radi, Teacher of Psychological First Aid at Al-Azhar University (Al Jazeera)
Abdel Radi says to Al Jazeera Net, that the meaning of life is strongly reflected in every tragic situation experienced by the Palestinian people, they are between two goals, both positive, either the liberation of the land and get their right to a liberated homeland or martyrdom for the sake of God, and both things a very large meaning makes all the tragedies of life trivialize in front of them, so the biggest Israeli fear is the psychological hardness enjoyed by the Palestinians and not only military equipment, so they target everything that breaks the determination and solidity of the people in the hope of His collapse and his attachment to life ceased, but to no avail.
"The psychological strength that appears to everyone now may differ when things calm down and return to normal," says a teacher of mental health at Al-Azhar University, "At this stage, psychological treatment should not be neglected for all those affected, and this is a daunting task that requires international solidarity to get an entire people out of the crucible of accumulated sadness, and that the state of wandering prevailing over everyone now in the videos coming from there requires that the provision of psychological first aid teams to accompany other medical teams in order to be a lifeline for thousands of children who have been exposed For the trauma of loss, whether the loss of their families or limbs or even the loss of their previous quiet and meek lives.
Source : Al Jazeera