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