Two years of war have taught me how trauma replaces compassion with survival

As an Israeli, two years of brutal war have taught me that trauma often replaces compassion with survival.

Some days I feel rage and hunger for revenge.

Some days I feel nothing—zero compassion, zero empathy, just a blank wall.

Other days I worry about my neighbors (my enemies), their future, and what this means for all of us.

Some days I feel I am embraced by my people as we come together as one family—like when the hostages came home and there wasn’t a dry eye in the country.

But lately I worry that the war has drained me so completely that I have trouble tolerating even small differences of opinion with those around me. The lack of compassion I feel for my enemies spills inward and becomes a lack of compassion for my own people.

And it doesn’t end there because when the world shows no compassion for what I have endured, it only deepens my spiral and once again makes compassion for the other exceedingly difficult.

And so, I remind myself that my mind isn’t one unified entity —it’s more like garlic than an onion, made of separate cloves. These parts are protective: one guards the physical safety of my family and friends, another my ethics; one fears being a Friar (Hebrew for sucker), another fears exploiting others. When danger looms and trauma surfaces, they all react at once.

That’s when I know to slow down and respond rather than react. I search for what Internal Family Systems calls the “Self”—the innate leader within me, separate from the protective “parts” I’ve developed. I work to step back from these parts and let my Self lead. There’s no finish line; and it’s always a work in progress.