middlepeace.com

Our basic human rights are defined as the right to live, to grow, and to develop. Besides food and shelter we have the right to feel safe and secure. Our psychological health is the main part of our basic rights as a human beings.

However this definition does not match our reality, our Iranian reality.

We Iranians live our lives with an overwhelming emotional suffering that has surrounded us one way or another.  We are heartbroken now more than ever.

The chaos, brutality, dehumanization and repression in Iran in current times and the past thirty years have left us with a feeling of constant pain, anxiety, fear, and stress.

From one day to another we are not sure what else can be happening.

In our minds we cannot picture more brutality, yet we know what the repressive regime of Iran is capable of doing more. We know it with our flesh and blood.

The ongoing suppression and crack down of every voice, the demonstrated hatred towards Iranian nation, and name calling of our people are only some of those weapons the oppressive hardliners in Iran’s government keep using.

Before the stolen election of our people, millions of us were hoping that we could leave the past behind and move forward under the current accepted laws.

Yet we were wrong.  We had not prepared for what an election coup would take us too.

Millions of us Iranians feel our votes, our voices; our choices are stolen from us.

This was the biggest disrespect that has inflicted a great deal of pain and anger.

The horror scenes that we watch on our T.V. screens are only one fragment of the horrible situation our people are enduring.

We watch and we feel our people’s pain. We take their pain into our hearts while we feel we are powerless to help them.

The flashbacks of the thirty years of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental damages on our nation are too many to bear with, particularly in this time of history.

Our mental health, our family peace, our social life, and our whole well-being are at risk.  A national grief and sadness are what we are experiencing right now in the month of June 2009.  Never before despite all viciousness that the Islamic regime of Iran has always used, have we felt this level of pain.

We are part of the whole world that deplores the brutality in Iran, yet we fear worse.  Our families, our dignity, our integrity, and our national identity are under attack by those who managed this election coup.

We suppress our feelings to be able to protest, yet our voices are being shut down. All means of communication with our home country is cut off and we witness human suffering imposed upon us, whether we live outside Iran and for sure inside Iran.

Our grief and sorrow is beyond imagination.

The denials of basic human rights in Iran are now compounded by the physical violence, torture, and organized crimes towards our people.  We Iranians are sufferings on a national level, something that makes us more united.

While democracy opens the door to creation, participation, and belonging, dictatorship increases our emotional pain leading to mental health problems.

We Iranians have for thirty years fought to keep our minds intact by getting connected to the world.

Still, the hardliners of the government of our home country mobilizes every means to alienate us from ourselves and from others.

The power of resistance, dreams, solidarity, and hope for a peaceful life however are what we have got after all.

Democracy and peace are integral part of health; on all levels.

August 18, 2009
www.middlepeace.com
Initially, this article was written for and published in EzineArticles June 27,2009 : http://ezinearticles.com/?Democracy—Integral-Part-of-Our-Mental-Health&id=2534930

According to DSM-IV-TR,  trauma is a direct experience of an actual or felt threat to death or serious injury.  Past 30 years we Iranians have actually been threatened, lost family members, lost friends, and seen other people lost loved ones in the jails, streets, war front zones, and in multiple ways.  Having witnessed, felt, sensed, heard, seen, and read about all the killings of our people in Iran, are not only a national trauma but a trauma in global scale.

If we just view the current severe experiences of harm and violent death back home, now we Iranian people are re-traumatized and left in intense fear more than ever in our history.   For those of us viewing the news in the safety of our homes in democratic countries away from Iran, we still feel deep sadness and trauma.  Our nightmares have all changed.  We fear constantly about our relatives and our home country that is burning in the glows of hate caused by a group of most dangerous men in the world. Own experiences of violence are now a small part of a reality back home that is beyond conceptualization.   People are not only fighting a regime of oppression and violent suppression, but also they are fighting own feelings of hopelessness and inner fear.  In a time when improvements of human rights for Iranians seem to be prolonged and farfetched, we have to utilize all help we can get.  Questions remain where the support and source of hope are for millions of us having left in the hands of a violent government.   I guess we have to wait and see; meanwhile hoping for the best is the only way to keep calm.

August 5, 2009
www.middlepeace.com

A long and interesting question led one or more readers to the middlepeace website:

“How can two people who have been abused have a healthy relationship?”

If the two partners in a relationship have been abused we can only imagine how hard it is for each one of them to help the relationship working. Why is that? Certainly each person is busy dealing with own pain and trauma.  The unresolved issues of abuse occupy the person’s mind to the degree that no energy is left for his / her partner.  Sometimes we are more or less resilient people, sometimes we have good support system in place, and sometimes we are just left out by ourselves.  In any case if you have been abused, neglected, abandoned, threatened, scared, and isolated, these are all reasons for seeking professional help.  You will not be able deal with these issues alone and not without help.

March 18, 2009
Poran Poregbal