Beyond the Breaking News-Part 7

Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

Deepali Bhattacharya

In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

PART VII

Why Old Wounds Never Really Leave

“Communities remember far longer than newspapers do.”

There are moments in history that become reference points.

Ask people where they were during a major earthquake, a terrorist attack or a national tragedy, and many can answer almost instantly.

Not because they were present.

But because the event became part of their collective memory. ¹⁶

After the recent train murder, I heard several people say the same thing.

“It reminded me of 26/11.”

The comparison was not about numbers.

It was about emotion.

When I asked TD why old tragedies return so easily, he explained the idea of collective trauma. ¹⁵

Unlike personal trauma, collective trauma belongs to an entire community. It becomes part of the stories people tell, the fears they inherit and the way future events are interpreted.

A new incident does not arrive alone.

It awakens older memories.

This is true not only for acts of terrorism.

Communities affected by riots, displacement, recurring floods or long histories of violence often carry invisible emotional maps. A loud sound, a familiar location or even a news headline can reopen emotions that had never completely healed.

Perhaps this is why healing requires more than time.

Time passes.

Memory remains.

The challenge before society is not to erase painful memories. That is neither possible nor desirable.

The challenge is to prevent painful memories from becoming permanent prisons.

Collective memory can become a source of wisdom.

Or it can become a source of perpetual fear.

The difference lies in how societies remember.

Do we remember only the horror?

Or do we also remember the courage of ordinary people who helped one another?

History offers both.

What we choose to pass on matters.

A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

When does healthy caution quietly become a life governed by fear?

Notes:

15.  Erikson (1976), studying the Buffalo Creek flood, first described trauma that damages the tissue of community itself; Hirschberger (2018) reviews how collective trauma becomes part of a group’s identity and meaning-making across generations.