What Children in War Zones Can Teach Us About Hope, Healing and Human Kindness with Dr Alexandra Chen #693

A note from Dr Chatterjee: this episode includes descriptions of the humanitarian impact of war, including death, serious injury, violence and suicidal thoughts. You may find them distressing so please listen with care. How do you help a child heal while they’re living in a war zone? And what can those methods teach the rest of us about caring for the people we love? My guest this week has spent nearly two decades finding out. Dr Alexandra Chen is a Harvard-trained trauma psychologist and psychotherapist who has worked in around 15 different conflict zones across the world. Her Early Light Foundation charity provides ‘a haven of trauma healing and hope for war-affected children and families worldwide’. We begin with the realities of her work, including the invisible wounds war leaves behind, and why her team’s first rule is never to make promises they can’t keep. Alexandra shares the moving patient stories of a seven-year-old dancer learning to carry an unbearable loss, and a torture survivor who asked her to document his suffering, so he would never have to speak it again. He carried that written testimony across borders and later told her it had saved his life. She takes us back to how it all started: an affluent childhood in Hong Kong, grandparents who never spoke of their trauma, and a trip to a refugee camp at 18 that changed the course of her life. We talk about the role of dance and movement as therapy, why we must trust children to set the pace for their healing, and the conversation with one mother that led Alexandra to start her project connecting therapists, interpreters and children in desperate need. Alexandra also explains why some therapeutic techniques don’t work in a war zone – because it’s only post traumatic stress disorder when the danger has passed – and what that reveals about how our nervous system protects us. There’s an important discussion on what it really means to be resilient and the hidden cost of having to be strong for a lifetime. And I ask Alexandra how she protects her team and manages to keep an open heart herself, after everything she’s witnessed. Towards the end, we talk about how overwhelming the news is. Alexandra explains that empathy needs action and gives some practical suggestions for how to turn feelings of helplessness into something useful. And we close with two stories of connection that will leave you feeling hopeful. At its heart, this is not a political conversation. It is about compassion, kindness, our shared humanity and the life lessons that can apply to anyone, at any time. I hope it leaves you feeling more connected to the world and the people you share it with – and more confident in the difference you can make. If you are affected by any of the issues raised, Samaritans are available 24/7 on 116 123 (UK and ROI). Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/693 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey guys, how are you doing? I hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More.

• 0:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's conversation is unlike any I've had before, and it's a conversation that has moved me to my very core. My guest is Dr Alexandra Chen, a child psychologist and trauma specialist, who has spent almost two decades working with families in conflict zones like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza, helping children survive and cope with the unimaginable. She has seen things that most of us never will, yet she brings a warmth and optimism to her work that I'm certain you'll find deeply inspiring. Now, you may be wondering why a conversation about conflict zones

• 1:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  belongs on a health podcast, but this is not an episode about politics, religion or geography. It's about kindness, compassion, and the principles Alexandra relies on in the hardest of circumstances that speak directly to how all of us can support one another. Feeling seen, heard and cared for is fundamental to our health and wellbeing, wherever we live and whatever we've been through. In our conversation, Alexandra explains how to offer emotional safety when physical safety is impossible,

• 1:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  and why over-promising is a surefire way to destroy trust. She shares some extraordinary stories and recounts the conversation that led her to start Healing for Gaza, the charity project that's grown from three people to a team of 180 in just two years. And we also talk about the real cost of resilience and how Alexandra keeps her heart open after witnessing so much pain. If you've ever sat with someone in crisis and not known what to say, or felt overwhelmed by the state of the world, well, this conversation is for you. And rest assured that Alexandra suggests

• 2:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  some practical ways that you can help. Some of this episode is difficult to hear, but it also brings a great deal of hope. And it's reinforced something I've long believed, that compassion may be the most powerful tool any of us has for changing the world. Now, some final words before we start. In this conversation, we talk about war and its impact on children and families. We cover distressing humanitarian consequences, including death, displacement, serious injury, violence and suicidal feelings. So please listen at a time and in a place

• 3:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  that feels right for you. And if any of it brings up difficult feelings, please reach out to someone you trust.

• 3:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think it would be helpful to start off by explaining to us how long you have been working in conflict zones for.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I have had the privilege of serving since 2008, so that's about 18 years in different conflict zones. I've worked in about 14 or 15, as I worked for the UN for about the first 10 years. And since then, have really just been serving children who've been affected by war and by displacement, as well as particularly victims of sexual violence and torture.

• 4:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Many of us will have simply no idea of the kinds of things that you have come across. Can you paint a picture for us as to the types of things you see as part of your job?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think for those who are in active war, all the things that we now have come to really livestream and see the bombings, the really brutal ways in which bodies are scattered, which children have to witness, the loss of homes and the complete and utter collapse of entire neighbourhoods, the loss of identity that comes with that when your entire livelihood and your family has been lost, has been martyred, has been killed. But on top of that, there are the invisible wounds that we're not always thinking about, but that includes a lot of despair. So with the terror, with the grief, with the anger, with the extreme fear, especially amongst children,

• 5:05Speaker 01

  and also all the work that it takes for a child to be super brave. A lot of these children are hiding their suffering from their parents as well. And so the fragmentation of a community starts with a fragmentation of the individual identity, the relationships between each other as they're on the run, as they are trying to get across the border, as they are trying to, as many of us saw around 2015, 2016, get across the sea and not drown and to survive. The starvation that is either forced or as a result of being without resources, living in a tent on mud, sometimes for days, sometimes for years and years on end. There are serving refugees that I've been working with

• 5:48Speaker 01

  who've lived in a plastic tarp on mud for 15 years. And then there are those who have also experienced torture and have been targeted for intimidation, who then also lose their touch with reality and do develop psychosis and other quite severe psychological symptoms.

• 6:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Your training is that of a psychologist?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Uh huh. A trauma psychologist specifically, psychotherapist, particularly with children and adolescents.

• 6:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  When you first started going to war zones to try and help, was there at all a part of you, even with all your training, that thought the magnitude of suffering is so great here? What can I as an individual possibly do to help?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I think that is always, always the feeling that on one hand, it will never be enough, but on the other hand, we have to do everything we can. I spend a lot of time with people who have been on the receiving end of the most extreme forms of human brutality and cruelty. And in that, realising that it is going to take not just an individual, but really an entire community to address the level of suffering and to begin some form of healing. But not letting the great be the enemy of the good has to be a principle in this work. Otherwise, it just gets overwhelming and we also spiral into the despair.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Part of the effort in these circumstances is to be able to take it really just one moment at a time, but also to put yourself in their shoes and say, if I were in this instance where I have lost absolutely everything and even feel like I've lost some form of dignity, but I feel utterly alone and utterly terrified, what would I want in this moment? And sometimes it is just a friendly face, a comforting voice, a reassurance that there's someone to walk with me through this part of my journey.

• 8:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  In the lead-up to this conversation, I was thinking it's almost trivial to try and sort of compare suffering, right? To compare what someone in a relatively safe environment, let's say here in the UK, might want to do to improve their health and wellbeing to the sort of things you see. But then I saw something interesting in your work, which was, I guess on one level, you can't compare the level of suffering, but it's what you just said there about being there for someone, being seen, providing a non-judgmental space for someone. I know from clinical practice how valuable that can be

• 8:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  for a human being who's not been through war. But I get from your work that it's also valuable for someone who has been through war and seen their house blown up and their parents murdered.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. At the end of the day, no one wins in the suffering Olympics. We're not here to compare trauma, but we are here to be as human as possible in response to all of it. Whether you are in a place of relative safety, trauma, as Judith Herman says, is the incident that overwhelms your system's ability to respond. So whether it is a car crash in a relatively safe country, where there are medical resources and the ability to respond, or it is a genocide, in both cases, the human being affected by that trauma wants to have the same response of a human who can offer safety, who can offer healing, who can offer reassurance and who will not abandon them. And so as much as possible,

• 9:52Speaker 01

  really trying to restore that mindset and that reality, even in the most overwhelming of circumstances.

• 9:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned we all want a human being who can provide us that safety.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I'm guessing there's a difference there between physical safety and emotional safety, because you, in a war zone, you can't provide physical safety, can you? So what kind of safety are you providing for these children and adults as well?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely, both children and adults. It is certainly a moment for emotional safety, but a lot of that actually starts with ensuring that we never overpromise. On my team, I always say, you know, that as much as you feel pressured to say that everything will be okay, or that, you know, we are safe, lying to someone in the moment just to give them a momentary comfort actually is quite dangerous to not helping them actually realise what is available to them, and also doesn't build the trust between them and us. And so, making sure that we don't overpromise is the first rule of it. But the other is to say very clearly, in this moment, you are in danger, but I am here

• 11:06Speaker 01

  with you right now. And in this moment, I am a safe person who is not going to hurt you and is going to listen to you if you'd like to share, and if not, just to sit with you as you cry, or as you want to rage and scream, or if you want to just walk through, how am I going to make sure that me and my four children can survive on the amount of food that I have, you know, for the next two days, and help you sort that out? And so really, a lot of it is accompaniment, but it's the promise of steadfast and continual accompaniment that we try to offer.

• 11:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Can you share an example of a situation where someone, a child, an adult, a family, was in great need, and you simply providing a nonjudgmental, safe space for them to cry, to be seen, has had an impact?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, many stories. I'll share three different ones with you. So there's a seven-year-old girl, Lara, who's a double amputee. She lost both of her legs to an Israeli bomb in Gaza. She's Palestinian from Gaza. And the bomb had leveled the entire building in which her house and her home was, and it was her and her father at home at the time. Her mother and her two brothers had been out visiting her grandmother when the bomb fell on the house. And so, the ceiling collapsed, that was her last memory, and her father threw himself

• 12:48Speaker 01

  around her to protect her, and in doing so, had protected all her vital organs. But they were crushed in the rubble for three days, and so she had to watch her father die, knowing that she was alive because he had protected her. And as he was dying, he said to her, Lara, be brave. He said, Matipki, don't cry. He said, be there for your mother, it's your job now, you have to be there for your mother and your siblings. And he said, don't worry, you know, I will be with God, and I will be with you always.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  And three days later, they managed to pull Lara out, but the entire time, she lived with the guilt of having been the reason that her father died, knowing that he had sacrificed his life for her. And throughout therapy, she would feel so guilty every time she cried, because she said, I am useless. She said, instead of helping my mother, my mother has to carry me on her back up four flights of stairs where we live, now in quite a dingy situation as refugees.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And so, the work with her, a lot of it was to help her work through her survivor's guilt, to say there was a space for her to cry. She made me promise a lot that I would not share with her mother, because she was afraid that her suffering would break her, on top of everything else. But we also found ways that she could contribute in the household, even as a double amputee. We found other ways for her to be able to learn, to learn with her siblings as well, even though she wasn't able to go to school.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And bit by bit, we helped her to rebuild her life, but also to feel that she was still in conversation, and not failing her father, who she felt so much shame for, you know, not fulfilling his last wish of her to take care of her family. But that took a long time, but it's such a huge burden on a seven-year-old.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And she's extraordinary. And the saddest part of all this is that she was a dancer, and one video she showed me was of her twirling, twirling on the beach of Gaza, and of dancing, Deppki Palestinian dance, with her girlfriends. And so, that was a loss that we also had to work through, yeah.

• 15:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Were you just helping her, or were you also helping her mother?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  The way that I work and that my team works is that we really work with the whole family as much as possible. More often than not, you know, parents come to us because they're worried about their child, but we always say, well, how about you? You have to carry the grief and the suffering of this child, which then becomes yours. As much as possible, we really encourage them to also be in therapy, and then we work with the family as a whole as well. And I think that's one thing that we're quite proud of, to be able to hold all the family. So each member of the family has a different therapist, so that they can feel that it's fully confidential. But then, we work together as a family, if and when they're ready, to be able to address the relational pieces that have fragmented, yeah.

• 16:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just thinking back to what you said before about not overpromising. I guess there must be a tendency to want to reassure in the moment, and, as you say, overpromise. When that has happened in the past, as I'm sure it has, what is the consequence of that for these families?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  I'm glad you ask, because this is one of the ethics that I teach my students, and also on our team, because we've had to learn, we have had to learn the hard way. So there's a lot of good intention, but that when it doesn't involve the families who are affected themselves, can really violate, you know, our principle of do no harm and humanitarian work particularly. I'll give you an example.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I remember the beginning of the Sierra crisis, there were a lot of mothers who couldn't breastfeed because of the stress, and so they had to feed their newborns. And there was an NGO, a European NGO, I'll leave unnamed, that was handing out milk powder, and, which of course was just from the best of intentions, wanting to help these mothers. But the milk powder had no instructions on it that were either readable, it was all in a European language, and none of the mothers knew what to do with it, because in their communities, they only did breastfeed at the time. And so, a lot of them were feeding their babies the powder directly, but they also didn't have access to clean water.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  So had they known what to do with it, that wouldn't happen in reality. So as a result, the children, the babies were getting sick from just being fed the milk powder. So, you know, this is an example, I think, of where not being cued into what is actually needed by the community can really harm them, but also then break the trust. And they say, well, you know, were you trying to hurt our children? Were you trying to, you know, were you trying to humiliate us for not being able to read your language, and so on? So, these also have obviously a psychological impact and hurt the community. In the therapeutic space, I think we all want to desperately be able to say to people that it gets better.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And sometimes we can say that, and it's one of the most comforting things that you can say. But in the middle of the war, when there is no post, to the post-traumatic stress disorder, when there is not yet any safety, overpromising can lead people to withdraw in the therapy process, and say, I don't feel safe with you, and therefore, I can't open up with you, and therefore, maybe the process of therapy is one that I cannot be entirely myself, or entirely let go in.

• 18:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  So trust.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which of course is important for any form of healing.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yes. And just to build on that, so much of what I teach my team to say is, I don't know,

• 19:03Speaker 01

  is actually saying to them that I may be a clinician with 25, 30 years of experience, but in this moment, I don't know. But I will be with you in the not knowing, and I will be with you in the journey of the step by step into the unknown, so that at least you won't be alone. And that's our promise.

• 19:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  I have lots of things to follow up on, but I don't want to interrupt you sharing these three stories I think you had to mind. So please feel free to continue sharing.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Thank you. And another is of a, an extraordinary man. He was 27 when he, when I first met him, but he looked like he was almost 40 because of the years he had endured. Six years in a prison under the Assad regime and endured extreme torture and then had escaped only then to be captured and then tortured by ISIS for another, for another few years. And in the process had lost his fiance, whom he was deeply in love with and, but never found her body, never knew news of her and had really just held out waiting for her. And his memory of her was really, I think, what helped him survive during prison, but

• 20:16Speaker 01

  then afterwards left him with extreme guilt to say, do I move on with my life? Do I know if she survived? And we had very small spaces for therapy. It was a tiny makeshift clinic where one side was the primary healthcare clinic with the doctors and the nurses who were doing, you know, emergency care. And then there was my side of it where we were offering therapy and a colleague of mine was doing psychiatric assessment as well. And he came in and detailed all, all of the torture that he had received, that he had experienced and had suffered through. And I remember at the time being very wary of

• 20:58Speaker 01

  how much he was really re-traumatizing himself in the process and being very direct with him and saying, you do not need to prove to me that you are a victim because I know that the world and the places in which you're trying to seek asylum are still going to treat you as a threat, as a, as a male Arab Syrian man. But he said to me in the moment, I need to be able to tell my story and tell it once and then not have to say it again. And that's when I learned at the time, really as a young therapist, that one of the greatest gifts that I could give him was to document his entire patient history. So beyond listening, being able to document and validate, have that translated into the local languages,

• 21:41Speaker 01

  have that verified by our legal partners. This was a way of validating that which the rest of the world was either denying or gaslighting. And he carried that paper onwards, onwards through his journey for asylum. He kept it in a plastic baggie that he taped. And when he, when he reached his destination, years later, he said to me, this paper saved my life. And he said, it also meant that I didn't have to repeat myself over and over because it was signed and stamped by a doctor and by the, the legal clinic with us as well. And so that's been a practice that I've carried ever since, that all the patients have the

• 22:21Speaker 01

  option. We take, we take their consent to document their patient history so that they, that they can be recognized moving forward. So that's another, I think, a different way of offering healing, even if it was only a one or two time, you know, because a lot of people ask, well, they're on the move. What if you only see them for, you know, a session, two, three at max before they have to move on?

• 22:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And there, there are ways to do things contained and safe.

• 22:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  There really are universal lessons, aren't there? Whether we're dealing with people who've been affected by war or not. And I don't think it's trivial to say that. In my first week as a GP, I learned that listening is medicine. I learned that I don't need to have a solution, like a pharmaceutical solution. I just saw it time and time again. If you allow people to tell their story and you don't judge and you listen attentively, that is often the first time they've ever been able to do that. And yeah, it's just interesting to sort of really reflect on that similarity in two completely different worlds.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Absolutely. And, and, you know, one as a child and also one as an adult man and who, by the way, went on to get married and have children.

• 23:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  You know, because he was so sexually tortured, he was so fearful. He said, I don't know if I can ever be intimate again. But years later, sent me pictures of his two children. And that was just the greatest joy. And so that, that healing is possible.

• 24:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Why is it you do the work that you do?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I, I grew up in Hong Kong, which is a bit of a champagne bubble and, and knew nothing about, you know, my family were in New York, Tokyo, London. So these were my points of reference as a young child about what the world looked like. So I didn't really understand, you know, poverty, much less war and suffering.

• 24:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  But when you grew up, was Hong Kong quite an affluent area?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Very much so. And very cosmopolitan, but at a very, you know, in a very global north way. But the truth is, all four of my grandparents were refugees. They didn't call themselves that at the time, but they had all escaped war and had to do extraordinary things to survive, but never really talked about it. My only surviving grandmother, however, I'm quite close to, and it came out in bits and pieces that, you know, then would sort of wake me up and realize how much she had gone through as a child and endured. I ended up, I was sort of falling into this work as a mistake. I went to Palestine as a Christian pilgrim, you know, wanting to see Nazareth and Jerusalem and Bethlehem

• 25:13Speaker 01

  and all the holy sites. And, but in doing so, in passing the refugee camps to, well, military checkpoints, first of all, often guarded by, by young people whom my age, because I was 18 at the time and, you know, military service in Israel begins at 18, but also to going to the refugee camps. It was the first time I'd seen children who really didn't smile. They'd look like they'd had the light taken out of their eyes. And it scared me because I had spent a lot of time volunteering in different parts of Africa. My first, the first place was in Soweto, you know, as you know, a famous slum in South

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Africa. It's incredibly poor. A lot of them had, were, were struggling with HIV AIDS and, but the children could find, you know, a spare tire and that would be their joy for the day. But emotional oppression is something completely and utterly different. And so encountering those Palestinian children at the camp really scared me because I wanted to know, you know, who has taken that joy and that light and that life out of your life, out of your eyes. And so I stayed really. At the time, I didn't speak any Arabic or I barely spoke any really other languages, other than those I'd grown up with. And, but

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I danced and so I volunteered as a dance teacher in a refugee camp where there was an Italian psychotherapist who taught me in the music and the art and the theatre. Teachers to use our art therapeutically. And at the time, I sort of thought that psychology was interesting, but was a bit of a soft science. I was a good pre-med student, as you do. And, but then I really just saw the transformative power of it in circumstances where children had seen that, you know, parents brutally murdered in front of them. And so that really opened my eyes to the power of psychological healing. And I suppose the rest is but history.

• 27:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  That opened your eyes to the transformative power of dance?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Of both dance, yes, movement, you know, and the power of movement and the body and healing, but also of psychological healing and the emotional, the emotional, emotional transformation and, and strengths that can be, that can be found even in deep, deep trauma.

• 27:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you're with a child who has had their parents brutally murdered, what role does dance have to play?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. So dance and different kinds of art can play an incredible role. We call them expressive therapies, the dance and music and art and theatre. But there's a time and place.

• 28:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  And it also depends on what has happened to those children. A lot of them are very fearful. A lot of them have a lot of anger in addition to the just enormous grief that they carry. But as Bessel says, you know, the body keeps the score. And so especially for young children who may not have the words to describe what has happened to them, sometimes movement is really the way for them to release, whether it is art and not just, you know, art in terms of drawing, drawing what has happened, but just, you know, the ability to, to express their rage through art and colour and the, and the power of that, to see it visually displayed, or movement that is powerful and the, and the, and the stamping

• 28:53Speaker 01

  or the, the ability to do so together is, is very therapeutic. But they're not, I, I think where I have had to, especially in sort of the humanitarian space where it's often done as a large program for children, I've always had to say, be careful because some children aren't ready for that yet. And it's too much too soon and can lead them to experience overwhelm in the healing process. So it's very powerful, but as with anything powerful has to be carefully, yeah, carefully approached.

• 29:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  It must be very challenging, I would imagine, to know.

• 29:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  When is the right time to introduce what? I'm guessing there are resource issues.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm guessing you don't know how many, you know, in inverted commas, sessions you're going to have.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 29:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  So i- is it that on one hand, there's a, there's a sort of urgency that I wanna give this child or this adult all the healing tools that I can at the same time? If I do too much too quickly, I'm gonna overwhelm them and, and sort of turn them off?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's almost as if you're in my trainings in our war trauma curriculum, because you're asking exactly that question. We say, how do we do therapy when each session could be your last? You don't know, you know? We could schedule it for next week for then, you know, where they could be displaced once again, or the house could be bombed. Or in, in some of our cases, we've lost patients. Patients have been killed after, you know, they started therapy with us. And, you know, that's a whole other level of grief. But in the moment, I think some of it is actually managing our own urgency, managing our own trauma and, and anger and the feeling that we have to fix things. Like you said before, the, the desire to provide a solution.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And especially early on, but especially when war is still ongoing. Our job is to be still. Our job is to slow down. Our job is to listen. But not just listen. I always say, especially for those on my team who work with children, trust the children, trust our patients. They will tell you how far they can go or not go. Our job is to offer options and agency. So not to say that this is the only way forward, but to say, okay, we could try this right now. Does it feel like you'd want to? Would you like to try? Or does it feel like too much? Because more often than not, when they are in survival mode and protective,

• 31:24Speaker 01

  they actually have quite a good sense of their boundaries.

• 31:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is that a unique challenge that parents or mothers face in environments like this? I'm, again, I'm sure you've got many examples, but I'm sort of imagining the mother whose partner's no longer around.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Whose house is no longer there.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  And maybe there's a few children that still need looking after. So there's a grief for the life that she used to have, the partner she used to have. Maybe one or two of the children are not there. I- is that a different kind of challenge?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  That sort of challenge that, you know, we, we can't even imagine?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It is a challenge to be superhuman. They have to be superhuman in these circumstances.

• 32:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  And have you seen them be superhuman?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. And it's extraordinary. I don't know how they do it. I really don't. They, and don't forget, this is often, at least I'm telling in the context of Gaza, but in a lot of Arab and different African cultures, you have never known what it is like to be alone. You grow up in a family where it's not just your nuclear family. Your parents live the floor above you or the house right next to you. And so it is the village who has raised you and your children. So when you are forced into exile without your spouse, you're not just without your spouse, you're without your parents, but you're without your siblings, you're without your children's cousins who they get to play with. And all of a sudden, you have to carry it all in addition to your own trauma.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And I really do think that they're superhuman because they hold so much, but also they work so hard not to take it out on their children. And that's why we have to be there. And that's why we're almost insistent that every parent who comes to us for, to have their child receive therapy is also in therapy.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  I can give you so many examples, but one of the, one of the extraordinary mothers, she's a journalist and she's just a powerhouse. And she has four daughters and one son. And the five-year-old had cancer. So in addition to losing everything, she had to get her youngest, Yaseen, who is my patient, cancer treatment.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And she said in an interview that we did with her recently, she said, I had no idea how to connect with my children anymore. Because she said, I had to be both the mother and the father, but also I had to be the home. And being so strong, I couldn't connect with them as children. And so that's where my team at Healing for Gaza, she, she, she said, was able to meet the children where they were, but also to give her space to just be her own person without the resentment that built. And that, and that does. But a lot of them are incredibly tired. And sometimes therapy is just a place to fall apart and be very tired and not be judged for it.

• 34:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Maybe the only place.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Where they can do it.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think I read

• 34:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  the story of Lena.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which I think is the story that prompted you to set up your organisation.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Can you, can you tell us a little bit about Lena and what her words to you ended up leading to?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Um, so

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I'm a trauma psychologist. And before the genocide started, I was offering pro bono therapy to war-affected children and their, and their families. And when the genocide started, obviously, the, the scale, the sheer scale of how many children were going to need help really hit me. I already, even before it started, was feeling sort of my conscience was really struggling with, with the length of my waiting list.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Because I was, you know, I said, there are plenty of people that I've trained with who are extraordinary, but I can't ask them to up and leave their lives and be on the front lines with me. They also don't speak Arabic. But my experience working with Afghan patients after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, and I don't speak Dali or Pashto, I know like five words in each language, made me realise that you could do this work if you trained your interpreter as well. And I had the most extraordinary interpreters, who I trained to say as the patient said, pause where they paused, choke where they choked, repeat what they repeated. So that as I was listening, even without video or with, you know, facial expressions that I could track, that I could then understand what was happening with them and what mattered. So that was the backdrop of what I thought was possible.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  But then I, I, I just sort of waffled. I was like, is this needed? You know, right now they need to survive and food and shelter and so on. How much, you know, it felt like they were more important. But does anyone want to talk? And was it worth doing if there were only a few of us? So I talked to Lena, who is the mum of a little boy, also a double amputee, who had, who had lost his legs in 2014 in the 50-day war. And I said, you know, is it worth doing? Bistahil, Yani? Is it worth it, you know? And, and she said, look, she said, my boy lost both his legs.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And if there was anyone in the world who could tell him that his life was still worth living, I still loved as much, if not more so than before, that he could still pursue his dreams, albeit in different ways. If there was anyone who could help him understand that and believe that, she said, I would have done anything to find that person. And she said, you were that person. But in healing him, she said, you also healed me because I was so angry and I was so, I was so panicked. And she said, and you helped me and my husband stop fighting all the time because we were so angry at ourselves for not having been able to protect him. We felt so much guilt on his siblings to not revolve their whole lives around him and feel guilty for, you know, going to school or having fun.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  So she said, for every single child that you can offer healing to, you are offering healing to at least five, six people who love him or her dearly. But then in her sort of very direct Palestinian way, she also said, Isnai, which means listen. She said, if you're not doing this because you feel it's too small, it's not big enough, it's not flashy enough, she said, then Haram Aleki, you know, shame on you. She said, because for every single child you can offer that healing, if it's only five, 10 other psychologists, she said, every child means the whole universe to someone. So don't hold that back from them.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And then I spoke to my mum, and my mum being my mum was like, well, every parent is only as happy as the saddest child. So

• 38:33Speaker 01

  between Lena and my mum, we pretty much started Healing for Gaza the next day and haven't really looked back.

• 38:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  And what is Healing for Gaza?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Well, Healing for Gaza is an emergency mental health intervention designed to provide the highest quality, culturally resonant, dignified therapy for children and families and frontliners particularly, who have been enduring the genocide and who are, who continue to struggle daily to survive.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  We have, in a lot of ways, offered also been a channel for those around the world clinicians who want to make a difference to be able to. So we are what we call in psychology, a container, a safe container whereby clinicians who don't speak Arabic, who are working online can make a difference. And so we started as three people two years ago. We are now 180 strong.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  And it means that every Tuesday at 5pm, a patient in Gaza, a therapist in Australia and an interpreter in Ohio can meet every week.

• 39:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow. It sounds like Lena's direct conversation with you was almost the

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Conviction.

• 39:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  The conviction. Did you almost feel an obligation at that point?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Absolutely. You know, and she just looked at me like, what are you waiting for? So I'll forever be grateful for that.

• 40:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  What do you personally get out of doing this work?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a huge privilege. It's a huge, huge privilege.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  To be someone who can, who's, who's allowed, you know, because it is, it is an invitation to walk with someone through the darkest time of their life and to see the ways in which they are brave and to witness the ways in which they are extraordinary and superhuman, like I said, but also the ways in which they heal.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Some people have said, you know, I've done this for a really long time. You know, one of, one of, one of the, one of the people who I sort of encountered recently, he was like, you're not jaded. He was like, how are you not jaded? I told him, it's actually a bit easier now because I've, I've done it long enough that children who were 10 years old, you know, who I first started working with are now 25 and are starting to build their own families and are, and are joyous. And, but I remember how dark and how suicidal they were in the beginning. So it is possible. Yeah.

• 41:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  That must be so rewarding.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  It is.

• 41:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  To see a 10-year-old in the darkest of pain and to see them 15 years on building a life and starting a family. That, that must be utterly incredible.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  And inspiring others, you know, speaking up and saying, you know, this boy, Daudan, who would say to other men, you know, other young men, go to therapy, you know, give it a chance, give yourself a chance. And, and, and using his, him and his family and his siblings and his mother as a, as a, as a model for, for what can be. And, you know, I didn't ask him to do that, but it was just his own experience that he wanted to bring others along as well.

• 41:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  So Healing for Gaza, it's a charity?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  So Early Light Foundation is a charity and Healing for Gaza is our flagship programme that we started with.

• 42:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  So i- if there is anyone who wants to contribute to Healing for Gaza, is there a mechanism for them to do so?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And they can go on our website or our Instagram and be able to donate. And if anyone who is a clinician who's listening to this and wants to, you know, join us, we're recruiting for our next cohort that starts end of October. If anyone who is an Arabic, you know, bilingual, native Arabic speaker who wants to come and interpret and support this, we will train you. You have no experience in interpretation, just a commitment to confidentiality and to the, to the dignity of

• 42:39Speaker 01

  and, and, and of mental health is welcome to, to, to apply. But there's, there's a way for anyone to make a difference.

• 42:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't mean to be crude by asking about exact financial amounts, but I guess to really

• 42:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  help people understand that the impacts that you're having, I know there'll be people listening now who wish to donate.

• 43:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  If someone donates £10, does that make a difference?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I'll tell you, every pound matters because there's not just the material difference, it's the energetic difference. I really do believe that the intention behind the donations is what makes this work possible and what makes it light, as we say, you know, in Early Light Foundation, what, what allows for it to be a human connection.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Maybe I'm very Chinese in thinking about it that way, but I don't think that money is money. I really think that who gives it and from what heart will influence the work. And in the same way, we do protect our work from not relying on donations for, from, from, you know, entities that have otherwise supported their destruction, which is sometimes a difficult decision to make, but I think an important one.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  But ultimately, you know, I think I'll tell you, the children are often so surprised when they learn about where the support comes from. So last year, when I, when I was speaking in Oxford at the trauma conference, I invited everyone to write letters to the children.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  And at every conference we do this, we say, please give where you can financially so that it allows for us to be able, especially to see them and meet them in person. But also write your love to the children. And what we do is we translate them, we put them up, we paper the entirety of the walls when we go in person with them and the children get to read them and they get to pick which letter they want to bring home. And we say, sign your name and tell the children which country you're from. And they're amazed.

• 44:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  So people at the conferences write handwritten letters?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  They give them to you?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yes. And we carry them with us when we go on mission, when we go on field mission. And these children keep them with them. I have heard a child send me a picture of one that he's kept on his fridge for, for almost two years. And he says, this is my reminder to not give up because someone cares.

• 45:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think I've either heard you say or read in one of your blogs, this idea that one of the hardest things for some of these kids and families

• 45:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  is that this is all man-made.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, this is not a natural disaster. This is something that has been created by man and therefore can be stopped and uncreated by man.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is that one of the reasons why these letters prove so powerful?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yes, because the children know, the children know that none of this is an accident, that all of this is man-made and strategically created to erase the history. One of, one of my patients said to me, they've taken from me my past and my future. I have no photos left. I have no memories left. I have nothing to hang on to. And then my future, I have no rights as, you know, a refugee and, and what do I live for? And so these letters are so powerful for that reason.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I don't know if you've, you've heard me talk about this one patient of mine really, who really challenged all of us. 10 years old, going on 45 and just, you know, we call him the mukhtad, which means the mayor, because every therapy session he sits like this and, you know, you know, it's almost just a lecture. We call it the chutbi yani in Arabic. He, he is like a lecture. And at first I thought that he was, you know, parroting some political commentary from his father. But then I met his father, who's an artist and couldn't care less about politics. It really was just his own analysis of the media. And he said to me once, he said, Doktora, he was like, I've decided.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  He was like, the way in which people see us as Palestinians is that they think we are cockroaches. Because everyone in the world is agreed that when you see a cockroach, you run after it and you kill it. And no one feels bad about it.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And he said, but Doktora, I need you to answer a question for me. Because this is at the height of the forced starvation. He was like, I have never seen anyone try to starve a cockroach. So why starve us?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And he's 10.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  These are the things he's thinking about, you know, and, and so the understanding is really, I think, as existential question for these children to say, if the world does not want us alive and doesn't think we deserve to, what do we live for? And so therapy is more than just tell me how you're feeling, you know, it's way more than that. It's, it's really saying, what is it that you need right now to be able to believe in yourself in this moment? To put the next foot forward? And just to say that I can't fix the world for you, but I can be here for you while you figure it out.

• 48:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned before that Healing for Gaza are recruiting for clinicians.

• 48:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's many clinicians who listen to this podcast. I imagine some of them may be thinking, well, I'd like to help, but I don't know if I've got the necessary skills. So what kinds of clinicians are you looking for?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  So we have psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers on our team. Our requirement is that you have 10 years of clinical experience, that you have some sort of, you know, that you're a licensed and qualified clinician, that you have 10 years of clinical experience, and that you also have some sort of trauma specialization already. So whether that is having taken a certification on it or that your work has been with people who have been war affected or have, you know, experienced, you know, are victims of sexual violence or of trauma, of torture, or some of our most, the clinicians who connect most with our, with our patients have worked with indigenous communities, for example,

• 49:20Speaker 01

  who have experienced displacement and dispossession. So that's our, that's who we are looking for. But also, I think people who understand the importance and are open minded to understanding that we're going to have to do a lot of unlearning together. So because everything that we have been taught about trauma, at least in the global north, centers around the concept of PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. But that was, that was a term that was coined in the seventies to describe the experience of an American soldier coming back from war and the flashbacks and the night terrors that he was experiencing while in safety. PTSD assumes safety.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  And so the therapeutic approaches that we have been taught mostly assume safety.

• 50:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  But if you try to apply those approaches to someone who needs to survive, for example, hypervigilance or dissociation, these are protective mechanisms that your brain activates when you are in a place where you need to be able to survive and not experience overwhelm. So for example, trying to down-regulate the hypervigilance could actually get someone into real trouble if they're not reacting fast enough to, to the far sound of a missile, for example. So the openness to unlearn with us and to learn anew is what we ask.

• 50:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. One of the most profound things I reflected on is literally what you just said, that we assume safety.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  When we're talking about how we manage PTSD. And of course, if you're in a war zone, there's no safety. So therefore, what of our therapeutic interventions are still valid in that backdrop?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  So I'll give you a couple of examples that have actually, you know, cropped up in our training. Humming, for instance, is one of the ways to help regulate when you are triggered.

• 51:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, stimulates the vagus nerve, right?

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Precisely. And often it's helpful to do it in group as well because you feel you are co-regulating with others. But humming sounds like drones.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  You know? So trying that would just really be so scary for everyone.

• 51:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  How does that, have you witnessed that happen?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I have witnessed that happen in other contexts and it's, it's, you know, quite remarkable. And so the learning has to come really quick to say, okay. You know, that is unsafe and not appropriate. And how to regulate from that moment of being triggered also.

• 51:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yes. So that is something that we've taught our clinicians, for instance. Another example is, you know, dissociation happens when your mind is overwhelmed and cannot be really in touch, even with your body, to, to experience the physical pain that you're in because so many people have injuries or have, you know, have been amputees and so forth. So even some breathing exercises can be overwhelming. So Alicia Sky, who the co-founder of Trauma Research Foundation, has actually come on mission with us several times. And she's extraordinary and has been, you know, really sees our patients where they are.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  And just as we teach in our curriculum, she says, slow, slow, slow. Moving too fast is one of the, one of the dangers of the ways in which sort of traditional therapy. And she, all she does is she gets the women to put their feet, both feet on the floor and breathe, and the tears come.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  And sometimes that's all they can handle, but that's sometimes exactly what they need.

• 53:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned that sometimes because of the severe trauma and the injuries that they're facing, there's this sort of disconnect when they're not actually feeling pain. Which reminds me of Dr. Howard Schubiner, who's a chronic pain specialist. And I'm sure you know how his work and this idea that it's the brain that creates pain.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  So these people are in a very unsafe environment. If they were to really experience the pain that their injuries would result in them feeling, it could be disabling, it could mean they can't move, they can't get on with what needs to be done.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  They would pass out half the time.

• 53:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, so the brain doesn't allow the pain to be experienced. So therefore, a breathing exercise that completely down-regulates you so that your body thinks it's safe.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even though you're not actually safe because there's an ongoing war, that could be problematic. That's what you're saying, right? I've never really thought about it like that.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  It puts you too much in touch with that which your body and your mind is not ready to, to acknowledge.

• 54:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  But how do you guys as therapists even know? How far can I down-regulate this human? Because these guys are activated up here. I know it's not linear like this, right? They're, they're on a nine out of 10 activation. If I was to bring them down to one or two, it would be too much. Maybe it's more appropriate just to bring them down to an eight or a seven. Is that just experience?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Some of it is definitely experience and that's part of why we recruit for clinicians who have that much, you know, that many years of experience. And some of it's just life experience also, you know, that you have to have been through quite a bit of life and your own traumas and, and your own difficulties and seen how that, you know, the ups and downs of that in order to be able to carry someone else's extreme grief. But exactly as you're saying, how do you know some of it is actually just, just getting out of the habit of applying a one-size-fits-all approach and really being humble and saying, I'm not going to know. And I need, I will, I need to find out. And the only way that I will know is by working with my patient, not working at my patient, if that makes sense.

• 55:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  And maybe a patient is the one who's going to tell you.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what I meant about trust the children earlier on. Trust them to tell you. And so the work is actually about building trust more than it is offering a therapy, especially early on. And the other is in, you know, as we try to widen the window of tolerance little by little. You know, I've had experiences where the patients are like, okay, la hornabas, like to hear and, and stop because I can't really do much more. And she actually said to me, she said, with you, I can do more. But she said, but with the rest of the world, when I step back out into the world, I can't. So I cannot have too much contrast between how safe I can be with you and how unsafe I am outside. And that was also a lesson to say, let's not, not put her through the, too much of a,

• 56:15Speaker 01

  of an extreme experience as well.

• 56:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  But I think just my last point on that is that also to give the patient's agency very upfront. I'm very clear when I start with anyone. I say that this is going to be 50/50. You may seem as the expert, as the doctora, but I'm in this with you 50/50, which means that if at any point something doesn't feel right, you tell me because you're going to know that best. My commitment to you is that I will respond to that, that I won't dismiss it or not hear it.

• 56:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  I just love hearing this sort of stuff.

• 56:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Again, the universality of what you've just said for me is really quite profound. You said about building trust and how important that is. I run a course where I teach clinicians and doctors and all kinds of healthcare professionals how to apply what I call the principles of lifestyle medicine with their patients. And one of the things I teach on that course, as I say, the four most important words I think I've learnt in my entire clinical career are connect first, educate second. Right?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 57:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm not talking about in a war setting.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Just anywhere.

• 57:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Just, but that's the human need, isn't it? Connect first, educate second. When they know how much you care, then they're interested in what you know. But without that first bit, and it's really quite thought provoking for me to think about that in the context of war, it's the same principle, right? The other principle that I think applies beyond that is this 50/50 partnership approach, which is we're going to do this together. I'm not the expert telling you what to do. In fact, you're probably more of an expert in certain areas than even than I am, even though I've got the qualifications.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 58:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  And would you say that you've learnt that over the years through making mistakes?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Of course, absolutely.

• 58:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think that some of my best, you know, teachers have been children who are very outspoken and, you know, who've taught me, who've really sort of been convicting in helping me understand that I have a lot of unlearning, also decolonializing, you know, to do in this work.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  I'll give you a small example. There's this one boy in Ain al-Hilwa refugee camp in Lebanon, who had this extraordinary, just he had learned English from Disney Channel, so he spoke very, you know, a disarming American English and wanted to sort of show off, but also practise with all the foreigners who would come through the camp. And, and he would hang out with me all the time in the office. And once there was a uni that came and was doing research and he was, he hopped off to, to, to meet them and to help them translate. And I was like, you know, have fun. And then he came back and he was in the foulest mood. He threw himself onto the desk, you know, opposite me and his legs were dangling.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  I was like, what happened? Shabak? And he, you know, what's wrong? And he says to me, he was like, all you foreigners, he was like, all you care is to call us resilient, resilient, resilient. And he was like, do you know, do you know what that means? He was like, you just want to, you just want to say that we are resilient so that you can feel good, that you can feel okay about all the, that has happened to us.

• 59:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  My God.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  He's like, that's for you, that's not for us, you know? And he said, but you know what it means to be resilient? That it means this is why my father has heart problems, this is why my mother's diabetic, you know, at a very early age, but the resilience comes at a cost.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  And so, you know, as a 10, 11 year old, Saleh really taught me, and at the time I was writing my dissertation, I was looking for the word resilient throughout and where had I used it? Presumably in a way that was trying to respect and to, you know, show my admiration for it, but without carrying the weight of what it, why do they have to be resilient? And what does it take to continually be resilient for a lifetime and for generations? It does come at a cost. The allostatic load on the daily is huge, but also the non-communicable diseases, you know, any of the UN agencies will tell you are remarkably high in these, in these communities as a result. So, you know, when some, sometimes, one of my friends, Sol, who's a documentary filmmaker,

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  asked me, he was like, why are you doing this? And I said, at some level, I'm trying to protect these kids' DNA because our DNA methylates to, to survive, right? And to, to evolve with what, what it takes for us to survive. But when the load is so extreme, things that we hold precious and dear to us, that are in our DNA about how we behave and how we are as humans to one another can get lost when you just have to physically focus on surviving. And it really struck me when one of my patients during the height of starvation, she said to me, I cannot give my last can of tuna to my neighbour. She says, do you know how, do you know how shameful that is?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  That I cannot be hospitable in the way that we should be as Palestinians? She said, but I can't, I have to feed my children.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  And she said, and I, she said, I'm afraid that that will change me as a person, that will change the way that we are as a family, as a community, as a society. We can no longer give and take care of one another because so much has been taken away from us.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  And she thanked me in that moment because she said, you have given me a gift that I can give others in this moment, which is that I can tell someone else to sign up for therapy.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  I can tell them that there was someone who will be on the other end of the line, who will listen to you and your suffering and your trauma and not judge you and not share it with anyone else and will hold that for you and maybe help you make the next hour, the next moment, the next day a bit easier. And she said, thank you for giving me something that I can give someone else because I can't give anything else.

• 1:02:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Given those conversations and given everything that you've seen and witnessed over the years, how do you think about the word resilience today?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  I think resilience is, is a central part of what makes us human and what allows us to overcome. But I caution against oversimplifying it or just taking it for granted.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Resilience needs to come with the understanding of what the cost looks like. And it also needs to come with the understanding that resilience in a, in a contained moment is different from the resilience that has to happen across a lifetime. Some of that just then becomes pure injustice.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  And that, that all of us are complicit if we just say, oh, they're wonderfully resilient, bravo to them, but then do nothing to try to change the injustices that forces them to resonate in the first place. So, I think that all of us have a, have, one, I think those, especially of us who have the privilege of learning about our own resilience mechanisms, should do that not just for ourselves, but then understanding what is it going to take for someone who has to be resilient every day to be able to rest, to be able to recover, to be able

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  to heal, to be able to be creative again, to be able to be expansive and to be able to be the fullest versions of themselves and really put our energy and our privilege in that, behind that and in that direction.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  It doesn't erase the fact that they will have to be resilient, but it means that there will be possibility.

• 1:04:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  A couple of times in this conversation, the word guilt has come up.

• 1:04:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Guilt you used in the context of a little girl, wasn't it? Who's, whose dad protected her vital organs but died in doing so.

• 1:04:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  You've also mentioned one of your grandmothers before. And I think it's a very nice little anecdote about what she taught you about guilt. So can you speak to guilt a little bit? And, and because I think it must come up in your work all the time.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Always.

• 1:05:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, you know, what is that guilt? Is it, is it well placed? Is it problematic? And, and how do you deal with it yourself?

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  You know how people say that grief is the evidence, you know, the depth of your grief is the evidence of how much you loved someone?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  I think in cultures where we are, you know, we understand the concept of Ubuntu, that I am because you are, the guilt is a reflection of actually how connected we feel with one another and how much we understand that how we are is affecting others.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  So while it can very much be paralysing, especially for those who have made it out or who have survived in ways that those dear to them haven't, it is there because they care. And one of, one of my patients who's very challenging because she's very sharp, she's brilliant, she says to me, don't try to take away my guilt. She says, it's what keeps me connected. She said, you should be worried if I'm not guilty because then I'll have iced over and I don't care.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  So even then guilt doesn't, you know, is, is not so simple. But I also, we also have patients who have eating disorders because they are guilty to eat when their family back in Gaza has nothing to eat, right? Now with Laura, a seven year old dancer, it was understanding that her father, just exactly as he said, Baba would not want you to carry that guilt. That's not, that was not his wish for you, that eventually managed to help her to move past that and to be able to carry the responsibility without the guilt, to separate the two. And to be proud of the ways that, in which she was fulfilling, you know, his wish without

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  feeling guilty for the ways in which were just completely nuttily impossible.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  But there, it's so interesting you bring up my grandmother because she was actually the one who sat me down. We were having afternoon tea in Hong Kong at some nice hotel, as we do. And just in the middle of conversation, you know, some, some gossip and laughter and talk about fashion or what have you, she, she just sort of changed the subject and she said to me out of the blue, she said, do not feel guilty for your privilege.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  She said, do not let your guilt get in the way. Don't waste your time feeling guilty. She said, because you could lose all of this privilege in a second. She said, so that the fact that you are safe, the fact that you have resources, the fact that you are educated, the fact that you are healthy, she said, use those, use those to help the others who can't. Because at some point you might lose that, but don't waste time feeling guilty.

• 1:08:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's so poignant hearing that. I'm really interested as to how this work

• 1:08:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  has affected you personally.

• 1:08:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  You've seen so much, you've experienced so much, you've probably seen things that you never wanted to see.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:08:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, but you have seen them.

• 1:08:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  So how is it changing?

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  I think it's made me very grateful

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  for what I have, but also in awe. Just every day is a humbling experience. I am in so much awe of every little one that I work with. Because the courage that it takes for them to show up every day is beyond what I think I could do. You know? But not just the courage, you know, they are loving and gentle and funny and, you know, so sweet and I just sort of, I'm like, well, you know, when I've had a bad day, I'm rather irritable. And, you know, and you've been through the biggest trauma of the world and you still run to me, a complete stranger and hug me, you know?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  And still share your biscuits with others and you know, all the excuses we give ourselves for bad behavior. These children sort of knock it out of the water and they're just, you know, they're just like, no, you know, they are responding to so much hate and violence with so much love. And so I'm in awe. But the other piece of it is the, I've had to dig in myself so much more space for both the darkness and the light. And so I've said this to my team, that the challenge, I think, and I think also of this generation, if we want to be in touch with the world, not just our iPads and not just with our AI and not just with, you know, sort of

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  cancel culture, if you will, in terms of deciding what doesn't serve us, but really be in touch with the fullness of the world is to to create and deepen our capacities for both the rage and the rest. Both the love, but also the, but also the calling out of the injustice and the outrage. That we have to make, and I've had to dig, I don't know, I think the Arabic word, hafid, like I've really had to dig the capacity to hold both the light and the dark. Not one or the other. I think when I, especially when I was working in purely humanitarian spaces, a lot of it would be just the darkness that one would hold.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  And that can lead to despair and, you know, coping mechanisms like alcoholism and so forth. And I saw that and I was very wary of it. And so I leaned very much into the goodness and making it an act of habit to also see the goodness that is there, whether it's of my colleagues or whether it is of these extraordinary children and parents and frontliners who are who are, who are teaching us new ways of being human.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  So I have been so privileged to learn so much in that. But I also, I remember coming back from my first rotation and my advisor at Harvard. I, I met up with him, he had taught me all throughout undergraduate and was my advisor as a graduate student as well. He took one look at me and he said, you've seen things.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  And this was after I'd really been working with child torture victims, people who'd pulled out their fingernails and done horrific things to them. And he said, you've seen things. And I said, I have. And he would say, well, now the work is to not let it darken your soul. He said, but it's a choice.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  So I've had to make, I think, some very intentional choices over the years. Cause otherwise it's very easy just to spiral and be very cynical. But when you're cynical, you cannot be in the business of, of healing.

• 1:12:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  How often do you cry in your work?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, all the time. I'd be worried if I didn't. The mental health of my team is an absolute priority. So every single clinician on our team must be in their own therapy. If they don't have their own therapist to be organized for that, they must be in monthly supervision, clinical supervision. Where they're sharing in group, you know, it's really peer support about cases that they're struggling with or impacts that they've had, you know, as a result of, of working with someone. And if they want individual supervision, they can ask for it as well. But these are requirements as part of being on our team, on our clinical team. But also our core team, our clinic coordinators

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  must all, you know, are offered their own therapy. It is on us, whether it is picking a clinician from the team that they're not directly working with or or choosing their own therapist whom we support. Because if you become cold and shut after this work, you are actually harming the people who depend on you to be able to hold that space and the expansiveness of that space for them.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Which means

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  that crying is absolutely important. The body, Subhanallah, is incredible, you know? So much of the way in which we release, where we release pain is through crying, is through sweating and through peeing. So if you're not hitting the gym quite a lot and if you're, and when I, when I received my training, one of the things that we were told as therapists was to, you're supposed to drink four liters of water a day to be able to process all of, you know, the negative energy that you're, that you're absorbing.

• 1:13:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Specifically for war therapy?

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, no, it was trauma therapy, just even beyond war. So even just the, the, working as a trauma therapist, you should be hydrating and that doesn't count caffeine and so on, just pure water.

• 1:14:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'd never heard that before.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Yes, and I learned this at SPI actually, and Ascension Motor Psychotherapy Institute, founded by Pat Ogden. And I was quite amazed, I was just, you know, but have freely carried that practice into my work. But the other part of it is crying. And so if, for years now, if anyone on my team showed up and I could tell that they were just numbed over. They were required to go home, they're not allowed to be at work, but their homework is that I have a list of sob movies. And they have to pick one and they have to watch it and they have to go cry their eyes out. Okay. And then they come back with a bit of a book report. And tell me about the film.

• 1:14:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you know they've watched it.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  So I know they've watched it. I mean, nowadays I can just Google it.

• 1:14:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, yeah, I did watch it. These are the four key points in the film.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  I'll be able to tell, I'll be able to look, you know, look at them and know if they have actually cried it all out. Because the hardening of the heart is really one of the scariest things to happen to anyone who's a healer. You can't, you know, but there are mechanisms to, to release it.

• 1:15:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Anyone is a human.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:15:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Beyond healer, you know, hardening of the heart, closing your heart.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Makes us robots.

• 1:15:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Makes us robots, doesn't it? It's interesting that you

• 1:15:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  direct them to sad films so that they can cry. And I think that probably echoes people's own experience when, let's say, they're in deep emotional pain or going through a breakup, right? They don't actually want a happy song. They want a sad song, they want to hear lyrics that speak to that so they know that they're not alone in that pain.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  To feel seen in that moment.

• 1:15:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  And then be able to release it without judgment.

• 1:15:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Again, you mentioned about the, the benefits of dance before, that creative expression, the, the movement. This is where art comes in, right? And music can, and film

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  can be incredibly human. The right film, the right piece of art at the right time can be incredibly healing.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Alexandra, we're here in Oxford. You're here for the Masters Trauma Conference.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  And because we're in Oxford here, there's a couple of things that have popped into my mind, right? One is

• 1:16:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  you gave a talk at this trauma conference last year. So question one relating to Oxford is

• 1:16:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  how was that talk received? And

• 1:16:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  in the Q and As afterwards, or when people were talking to you afterwards, were there certain things that people were saying that surprised you?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  You know, I

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  every time I've spoken at Oxford, I have been so moved by the, by the compassion of everyone. Because sometimes I think, maybe I also feel like the children. That the world has let them suffer. And that no one cares. Now, we are a self-selecting bunch at the, at the trauma conference. But, you know, when I spoke last year,

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  I received a standing ovation, not for me, but for, I think, the voices of the children who have had to be so brave and the, the stories that I told. But to see them respond to these children's lives was deeply moving for me. Because it means that they still care and that people who still want to make this right. And not just sort of take it as the status quo.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  I think some of the things that have maybe surprised me in the responses has been the level to which people thought it was impossible to make a difference. People were like, wow, you mean, I don't have to go out there, I don't have to learn Arabic, I don't have to be war trauma specialized to join the team and to do something. I said, yes, we will provide the training, we will provide the container, we will provide all the mechanisms to do it. You just need to bring your commitment and your heart and your openness to do this. And, and you, it's, and I suppose in some ways I'm realizing now it's my approach to therapy, it was the 50 50. You know, you bring your part, we'll bring ours. And that's the only way we can do it together.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  But I think the other was

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  I think I was a little bit surprised by how many people were shocked by the level of the children's suffering. I'm in it day in, day out. But we're also in an era where, you know, all of the suffering was live streamed and from multiple fronts. So there's part of me that's just sort of like, how do we not know? But I think, you know, whether it's the algorithm or whether it's just overwhelm that that that leads us to be selective about it. You know, the information overwhelm is also very real. So finding ways for these stories to come through, that's why I'm so grateful to Masters Events for holding this conference, for inviting me to come speak, because it gives a doorway of, obviously,

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  I wish the children could speak for themselves, but it gives a doorway for their stories to be heard in a moment where it can, that even the audience can be to feel safe enough to listen.

• 1:19:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's really interesting that you were surprised by how little some people knew.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think people are switching off a little bit. You know, the human brain isn't designed to hear about all of the suffering that every single individual all over the world is struggling with.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:19:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, on an evolutionary level, we probably only ever knew a max of 150 people. And you probably didn't know everything about all 150. So now to have this kind of trauma live streamed, some people just don't watch or switch off. Some people hold the view that the news is toxic, right? And watching the news simply doesn't help me because me watching the news makes me feel negative about the state of the world, makes me feel bad about myself, makes me feel guilty. I feel the whole world is just pointless. And it's one of the reasons I asked you to give exact examples before, because even when we talk in generic language about, you know, there's war, there's displacement, those are still

• 1:20:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  surface level terms. Then we hear the stories. Then suddenly, you know, your heart is literally cracking as you feel the pain. What's your take on that? So that individuals say, I don't want to watch. I don't want to know how bad it is because it doesn't help me. What do you say to them?

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  I will say that one of the, one of the dangerous things to happen to us as humans is when we feel an enormous amount of empathy and then we're faced with helplessness, when there's no outlet for that empathy to be, to actually transform into something that is good.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Feeling our own helplessness daily and powerlessness is very, is quite literally dehumanizing, is demoralizing. And that's actually what people are turning away from. It's not just the horror of these things, which is overwhelming in its own right, but it is the feeling of powerlessness. It's a lot of why we started Healing for Gaza, to have an outlet of, for the empathy to be channeled positively, so that people would not be paralyzed by this despair.

• 1:21:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  They can do something, they can donate.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:21:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  If they've got the means.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yes. And they could donate in a place where they trust that the funds will actually go to the right people, because there's a lot of anxiety in that space as well, in charity spaces in general, but also with Gaza being so shut off to the world, you know, and which I fully understand. But when you have a, when you are constantly feeling that helplessness, that is very hard to keep coming back to. And of course, the brain is going to try to self protect. But I think one of the troubles actually of going from print media to the overwhelmingly visual media that we have now, is that the visuals are too much.

• 1:22:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  And so on my team, the way that we have tried to balance exactly this, the being able to protect your own mental health while also, while also not being disconnected from reality, is there are two things. One is that I tell my team, watch the videos, but without sound. Most of them have subtitles anyway. So if you're going to scroll and watch without sound, don't overwhelm the body. Because don't forget, sound is actually the first, the first sense that we develop in the womb. You know, and so that is the sound of your mother's voice and, and the people around her, that, that is your first knowledge of safety. And so hearing people screaming and, and anguish and agony is

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  very difficult to take, especially in large volumes. But the other is that on our team, and one of my incredible, you know, I have incredible core team, but one of them, Jenna, who's our program coordinator, she does a sit rep every two weeks, sit rep, meaning situational report, this is a very UN term that we've borrowed, but where she takes all the news and she just consolidates it into writing, so that our entire team can be on top of all the news that is in English and in Arabic, some which is not accessible to our, you know, non Arabic speaking clinicians, but that they don't have to watch it, they can read about it and be on top of it. So walk responsibly by our patients so that they know what are the things that are happening to them without also compromising their own

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  mental health.

• 1:23:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Yes. So there are ways around it, but we have to be committed to it, we have to want to, you know. But again, I think that we also should be conscious about that the shift from print to visual is, and graphic is not actually a small shift in terms of how we are disconnected or connected to each other as people, what we actually have the capacity to do healthily.

• 1:24:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  One thing I wasn't aware of until I started looking into your work was that in April 2024, UNICEF estimated that 100% of children in Gaza needed mental health and psychosocial support, 100%. And I think I've heard you say in an interview that that's the first time, or one of the only times they've said 100%.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  It's a very big thing to say, yeah.

• 1:24:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And I guess a lot of people feel that there's, there's struggle and suffering going on in many countries around the world.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  And they're like, well, how many things can we care about? You know, do you know what I mean? And the reason I'm bringing these up is because it's not easy to bring these things up, but people will be thinking this.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:24:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  And so it's much better to have it out in the open. So you can sort of at least give your perspective on this.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I, you know, I think the ask is not for us to care about or, or put our energies into everyone and everything. We can't. But I think what is asked of us is to put our energies and care where we can best serve, best make a difference, and to encourage others to do the same, whether it is for, for this community or for another.

• 1:25:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  For me, it's because I'm an Arabic speaker and there are very few Arabic speaking trauma psychologists and even fewer who are, who are child specialized.

• 1:25:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  You speak 10 languages, don't you?

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I can tell from you, you're very modest, you're very understated, but what you do is really quite profound.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And so, but I also think that all of these, like anyone, I really do believe that anyone can make a difference if they really put their mind to it. But it has to be a priority.

• 1:25:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  So is the message from you, if you're lucky enough to have privilege and have safety in your life, make a difference in some way, whether it's with the children in Gaza, or it's at your, you know, the homeless shelter, right? Or like, is that your message? Without being too sort of trite about this?

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yes, no, it really is. Because I think we're forgetting, I was talking to Linda Thai, who is one of my mentors in this space. And we were talking about how we have come into an age where we have somehow found it acceptable to hurt each other in absolutely brutal ways. And previously, one of the humanitarian, UN humanitarian advisors who I worked with had said, you know, Syria is where the world's conscious came to die, you know, conscience came to die, because the things that happened during the Syria crisis were just red lines that one should never cross. And we have seen so many more

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  red lines crossed in Gaza, for instance. But in the absence of, of ability to claw that back, or at least on an individual level, what we can do on an individual level is then to resist that by showing kindness and healing and comfort and compassion and, and love really, to those who need it. It sounds very trite, but it, I think is actually the basis of how we can reverse any of this.

• 1:27:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  You change the world by changing yourself, right?

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  I really do believe that on such a deep level, that we've all got a circle of influence. And if you change yourself and the way you act and the things you give out to the world, you impact everyone you interact with.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then they start to impact the people they interact with. And if enough people do that, some people will call me naive, but that is the view I hold.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  100%. And we're created like that, you know, we are, you know, memetic theory, you know how, you know, there's a saying that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And when, when I'm talking to parents, I'm like, be careful when one of those five people is actually not a person, is, is, you know, a bot or is an online, you know, really, for ourselves as adults, but also obviously for children. But memetic theory is we are, we are monkey see, monkey do. And so when we can model that for people, the people around us, and likewise, I know how I've, I've, I've absorbed that from others who I care about and look up to.

• 1:28:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  That's the only way that we can not just sort of put our hands up and be like, well, it is what it is. Yeah. Because they'll all be at our doorstep.

• 1:28:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  This podcast has been going for almost nine years now. And it's something I feel an incredible privilege that I get to do and have incredible conversations with incredible people. I've never had someone like you on the show before, in terms of the kind of work you've done. And there will no doubt be some people thinking, saying, commenting, why are you delving into a political area? This is a health show. But my view, and one

• 1:29:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  of the reasons I invited you on, is because I think your work needs to be heard by people.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:29:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Irrespective of the nationality of the children you are helping, this is a humanitarian issue. This is an issue of our fellow humans and fellow humans of ours who are in a great deal of pain.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's a humanity issue.

• 1:29:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  What we allow to happen to others is changing us.

• 1:29:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if someone's saying,

• 1:29:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Rangan, you shouldn't be having these conversations on your show. What do you say to them, Alexandra?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  I say we have to be braver.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  We have to be braver to have the difficult conversations about what we have allowed to happen to each other, which is utterly unacceptable.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  And that will, if we're not careful,

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  really changes in very dark ways. It already is happening. And if we can't talk about it here, where you have an audience who cares about health, if nothing else, the body keeps the score. All of us who know that this is happening, it is changing our bodies. It is changing our organs, whether or not we admit it.

• 1:30:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:30:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Alexandra, I'm truly in awe of what you've chosen to do with your life and what you've chosen to do with your career.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:30:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Setting up this organisation Healing for Gaza a couple of years ago, seeing how quickly it's growing and making an impact is very inspiring for me. I know and hope that people who want to help on the back of this conversation, jump on to the website. And is it Healing... What was the website?

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  It's healingforgaza.org for Healing for Gaza specifically. But if people want to learn about our wider work, including our research, it's earlylightfoundation.org.

• 1:31:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Earlylightfoundation.org. Okay, we'll put links in the show notes.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And they're both linked to each other, so.

• 1:31:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  And all that kind of stuff. But to make sure we're finishing this conversation on an optimistic note, okay? Which is, I think, something that we both would like to do.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:31:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Given everything you've seen, everything you've witnessed, everything you've been through, everything you've seen others go through,

• 1:31:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  what has all of it taught you about happiness and human flourishing?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  I think that the joy that is possible after so much destruction, to experience that or even just to witness it

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  is magical and is absolutely worth fighting for. Every piece of it. And I've seen it happen in so many children's lives, so I know that it is real.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  And I also know that it's possible for, you know,

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  with not, doesn't take a dreadful amount of energy to make that possible. I want people to know, to not be overwhelmed by the task that is ahead of us. I think that's what I want to say. Because

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  people, at the end of the day, if we can do it together, when we resource each other and be powerful for each other and be steadfast for each other and compassionate and courageous, we will surprise ourselves and surprise ourselves in really these incredibly beautiful ways.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  I'll tell you two things.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  And one is that there will be beautiful things that happen, even without you expecting. So on one of our, one of our field missions, I don't know why, it was probably one of my harebrained ideas, but that we had a morning shift and an afternoon shift in a space that was, that we've chosen always very green and beautiful spaces, because they're so rare for these children to be in, but they want them to also feel closer to home. And we had a morning shift and an afternoon shift. And we expected, you know, everyone just to be a little bit late and so on with traffic. And, but what we had was that the first group was a bit late, but the second group was so excited to come that they came early. So there was an overlap of, you know, about 200 people in a space that really should only hold 100.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  And one of my, and these were two groups of patients who were from different parts of the city, who would have otherwise not interacted because they would have been six hours apart from each other. And one of my patients came running up to me, dragging another woman behind her. And she was like, "This is my friend." She was like, "This is my best friend from uni. I thought I'd lost her. I thought she was gone." And, and she said, "We were in school together." And it was the two of them, women in their early 40s, with their teenage children. And they were sobbing and their kids were sobbing. And, and she was like, "It's all your fault. You're not on social media. I couldn't keep track. You know, after your whole family died, I thought you died too. There was no one else I could talk to."

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  And, you know, she was sort of like yelling at her friend, you know. And, but then she, you know, she just looked at me with eyes, she was like, "Look, you are bringing us back together again. You are helping us rebuild just by giving us a space to be beyond all the therapy, beyond any of it, just for them to be and find each other." And just that joy on their faces, I wish I had captured it because this is extraordinary. They were together again, you know.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  And then, and then there was this one, this is one elderly gentleman, who is a medical doctor, who was very, very well-known in Gaza and had done extraordinary work. And one of my proudest, actually, pieces of the work that we're doing is that we include all the men. It's not just the women and children, very insistent about this. And our men's groups started small, but now the men not only come early, they always bring a friend. And one of them, the men who came for the first time, was a little bit sceptical about it at first. He came, but he wanted to check it out and, you know, he had kids and he wanted to bring them along.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  And then he spoke to our interpreter, one of our extraordinary interpreters, Sala, who was facilitating the men's group. He was like, "Walla." He was like, "I'm so surprised, you know, that there are people really, you know, trying to bring us back together like this and to offer an opportunity for us to talk about, you know, these difficult things and to really, you know, heal from it." And he says, "Walla, you know, I'm very impressed." And then he asked Sala, he was like, "Who started this?" And Sala, you know, points to me over there, he's like, "The woman wearing, you know, the white jacket." And he's like, "Who? I can't see." And Sala goes, "The Chinese woman." And this doctor goes, "Ah, even here, the Chinese are dominating." It's just a hilarious moment of, you know, he had never met a Chinese person ever.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  And, but in the moment of connection of saying, like, even someone from the far ends of the planet would care. And that meant, you know, and that meant something to him. And we joke about on the team, but I think that's really just what it is, you know. I refer to this quote by Dawud Hari,

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  it's called, who writes a memoir from Darfur, which now feels so long time ago, but is still so relevant. It's memoirs of a tribesman. And he says,

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  "How can you be safe if your people are not safe?" And he says, "But then who are your people? Perhaps everyone is your people."

• 1:37:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  What a beautiful place to finish this conversation. Alexandra, you're an incredible human. You're doing such phenomenal work with your team.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  You're very kind. Thank you.

• 1:37:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, Rangan.

• 1:37:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you would like to learn more about the organisation that Alexandra helped to set up or support them with a donation, just go to healingforgaza.org for all details. And if you found that conversation as impactful and thought-provoking as I did, please do consider sharing it with others.