Hi Gatherers,
I wanted to share an excerpt from my new book "The Paranoia Switch" with you. Join me for a live chat in News.gather.com on Tuesday, September 11th, from 1-2pm ET.
Chapter 1 Would you like to feel safe again in your own country?
If your answer is yes, like most people’s, then you are personally involved in a struggle even more crucial than the war on terror. Though you probably have been only dimly aware of your situation, you have been fighting this battle for a number of years now, and the outcome of your private crisis will affect your future, and your children’s, even more fundamentally than the success or failure of global terrorism. It is a struggle that your ancestors, from nearly all countries, have been through many times before, after man-made tragedies during the last five thousand years or so. Too often, they have lost the fight, but sometimes, by the skin of their teeth—and just well enough to keep human society going—they have endured. And here we are, doing battle with it once again.
Let me show you what I mean.
Spend a moment—and it will take no longer than a moment in this case—searching for some memories. What were you doing on the morning of September 11, 2001? This is an easy question to answer, is it not? You can recall precisely. What was your first thought when you discovered the news about the World Trade Center? Where were you? If you have children, where were they? Where were your other family members? Your closest friends? Whom did you speak with first? How did you feel on that day?
I imagine that you have immediate and extremely vivid memories to answer most, perhaps all, of these questions. Those of us who were adults or adolescents on September 11, 2001, will carry these memories to our graves, in a way that far exceeds our normal capacity to remember most things. We will be able to recall small details—the weather where we were, what we had been about to do but stopped doing, exactly which telephone we picked up—as if we had tiny videotapes in our heads.
But now search for another memory. Try to recall something—anything—about the morning of September 10, 2001, a mere twenty-four hours earlier. What were you doing then? Where were you? Where were the people you love? How did you feel on that day? Most of you will be unable to answer a single one of these questions. I know that I cannot.
Less specifically—which, by rights, should be much easier to remember—what was life in general like for you during the summer of 2001, before the disasters? Overall, what kind of mood were you in? What were your major plans for that fall and winter? What projects did you have going? What were you dreading and what were you looking forward to, back then? Is it difficult to recall what life was like before international terrorism arrived in the United States? Even when you stop and concentrate, do the memories feel a little equivocal?
It is disproportionately hard to remember our lives as they were prior to the catastrophes of September 11, 2001. We can recall many of the most prominent objective events of our pre-2001 existence as well as ever, of course, but we know that the psychological fabric of our lives was somehow different, that we felt a different way, that we were, in effect, different people before the reality of terrorism was force-fed into our consciousnesses. And our memory of this is foggy, dim, and keeps slipping away when we try to hold it still for reflection. We simply cannot reconstruct the way we used to feel, and really, it is impossible to remember exactly who we were before those indestructible towers were obliterated.
We felt happier then. We felt safer. We were more trusting, less paranoid. We were . . . What were we?
Excerpted from The Paranoia Switch by Martha Stout. Copyright © 2007 by Martha Stout. Published in September 2007 by Sarah Crichton Books, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Comments: 5
Just my two cents' worth. :-)
I'm sure you will address Angela B.'s query and assertion, but I would also like to give my response here.
Angela, I guess we all have different reactions to traumatic events, like 9/11. For me the attacks did change how I feel inside and my perspective on my own personal safety as well as that of others. Yes, we've always had threats throughout history, but 9/11 was not a threat. It actually happened. And not only did it happen, it happened right here on American soil, in one of the major cities in the country. The 3000+ people who were killed, were not killed in some far off country as has been the case with the wars that have been fought in my lifetime. 9/11 was and is not something about which we have a vague idea and fear. Most people I know, including me, had a very visceral reaction to it. It happened right here in the U.S. in New York City. If it can happen there, it could happen anywhere, any time, even our own home town/city.
I know plenty of bad things happen inside of this country, for me, 9/11 is on a much grander scale. The people who attacked the World Trade Center were outsiders who managed to get inside, get their training inside the country, were able to overtake four airplanes and use them for their own heinous purposes, killing all the people in the planes as well as the World Trade Center. And themselves in the process.
I definitely feel differently and look at the concept of "security"/"safety" in a whole new and disempowering way. No, I don't sit and obsess everyday about all of this, but it's always there in the back of my mind and with each new terrorist attack by Al Qaeda and terrorist groups associated with Al Qaeda, (London, Spain, Germany, Latin America (I forget which specific countries), etc. the reality that something like 9/11 could easily happen again and the fear that goes along with not knowing when or how, surfaces again.
I do think that 9/11 has changed the way many Americans feel-not quite as at home in our own country. It is not impenetrable. It and we are just as vulnerable to attack by terrorists as any other people and their country. Yes, this was true before 9/11, but that 9/11 actually happened, took that awareness of the vulnerability of our own country and put it right in our faces.
I do plan to read this book. Having suffered from panic and anxiety attacks since I was a child, the feeling of fear is very well known to me. September 11, 2001 was a fear all its own. It was so different from what we had ever experienced in this country, that many people have not yet come to terms with what happened, how they felt, how they reacted, and what long term effect it has had on them.
I will attend the chat on this topic as well.
I assume this is what your book touches on, in part.
I certainly hope so. I have been awaiting a watershed moment, a sea change in psychiatry for years, nearing decades, by now.
Actually, I have very clear memories of many events in my life, although I cannot always pinpoint an exact date for the memory, especially the further back the memory originates. My first memory that I can date would be my first birthday. I remember what I wore. My mother's face. What the cake looked like. The brightly wrapped presents. What it felt like to be put in a "big person's" chair on telephone books so I could blow out the candles... and being very curious and puzzled about the whole affair lol. My memory of learning to walk holding onto my mother's dog would have been earlier... but I have no date for that event. Memories are funny things. lol... the Mind often seems like the real "last frontier" to me.
wishing you laughter
..
U