Engaging With the 'Dark Side' (Updated)

An updated version of my 2001 article

Photo by chloe s. on Unsplash

I wrote ‘Engaging with the dark side’ in 2001. A few years ago, I published it on Academia, and I know that it has been well-read. Given the current state of the world, I felt that the article deserved another update.

Below is the start of the most up-to-date version. To read the entire article (7843 words / 9 pages) please follow the link to Academia, where you can easily read, and download the pdf version. You do not have to be registered on Academia to access the material published there.

Since last October, many have felt the need to become more active politically. Activism is difficult, and it carries personal risks. I think many new activists are beginning to feel the impact of it. We all need to be supported in our activism so we can remain well and not burn out. I hope you will find this article relevant, useful, and supportive.

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Engaging With the ‘Dark Side’

The Urgent Need for Sustainable Activism

Dedicated to people who try to do good, everywhere

(Original version, March 2001 | Latest update: 3rd July 2024)

Introduction & Context

A few years ago at a Social Ecology Research Group meeting, we were shown some statistics about the severely run down state of our planet, and of humanity. Several students admitted to feeling overwhelmed and depressed. I believe that in the face of the hard facts of our current global reality such feelings are not the sole domain of Social Ecology students. Many people have a similar reaction when confronted with the latest human or ecological catastrophe in the mass media.

At the time of this update (July 2024), we have been witnessing a genocide in Gaza for eight long months. The trapped population of Gaza, over two million people, has languished under tight and cruel Israeli control for decades. Since last October, on the excuse of ‘fighting Hamas’, Israel has flattened most of Gaza, and all of its infrastructure. Israel is deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe in order to force the world to take in the Palestinians it has yet again turned into refugees. Israel is engaging in systematic torture, mass killings, and is now starving the population to death. All of this is the culmination of Israel’s Zionist settler-colonial project intended to remove every last Palestinian from historic Palestine and replace them with Jews. This broad daylight genocide is by no means the first in human history. As has always been the case, international players either continue to do nothing, or support the perpetrators, not the victims. This genocide has been so visible, it has succeeded in awakening even people who hitherto have not been inclined to get involved politically. Almost every client I see these days, expresses feelings of powerlessness, pain, and frustration about Gaza. They talk about how they feel about it, before they talk about their own personal concerns.

At the same time, scientists are telling us that this year we have been experiencing unprecedented weather events, never before seen. Flooding is widespread along with landslides. Tornados and hurricanes have started much earlier than they normally do, and they are far more ferocious. Soaring temperatures are killing people in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. Even in countries that are used to heat, the conditions are unprecedented. Scientists have long predicted that the Earth’s climate would become unstable, with severe repercussions for human existence, and human civilisation. I do not rely on media’s clickbait, or sensationalism, and ignore the media’s attempt to frighten readers to get the public’s attention (fear gets people’s attention even more efficiently than sex). I follow climate science research, and read the original papers^[1], not the writeups about them in the media.

What many papers point to now is an increasing realisation that scientists may have underestimated the speed of climate change, and its severity. Even the most dire predictions seem to have been an underestimation. It is increasingly clear that climate models have been inaccurate, due to lack of sufficient data, and possible researchers’ bias. In other words, models are not compatible with reality. As models are updated, the picture appears grimmer, and more disturbing. Changes that we were told to expect at the end of the Century – when most of us alive now would be gone – are already happening.

Another alarming discovery is that microplastics are everywhere, in men’s testicles and penises, in animals, both wild and domesticated, in marine life, in our water, even in archaeological sites. No one knows what this means, but you do not have to be a scientist to suspect that is not good for our health. It is likely there is some connection between the increase in illnesses like cancer, and chronic, autoimmune illnesses, and the state of the planet.

The politicians and leaders of the world are still driven by egos and short-term personal gain. They continue to develop, sell, and buy weapons, wage wars, and perpetuate division in humanity. There is little appetite to try to curb the industries that are destroying our planet, and bickering about triviality is everywhere. The far right is on the rise in many places, and the alternative is weak and has nothing much to offer to people who succumb to fear and express it by demonising the ‘other’.

No one in position of power makes any effort to get us all together, and lead us toward cooperation. Countries continue to focus on their own narrow interests, despite the fact that what humanity faces now does not stop at anyone’s borders. If things do not change, humanity will go over the precipice continuing to make self-defeating choices, and fighting itself all the way down.

If humanity is to change direction, activism, social and political action, and a new vision, are needed urgently. Activism will therefore need to be sustained for as long as necessary. I therefore believe that what I say in this article may be more important now, than twenty-three years ago when I originally wrote it.

Staying Engaged With The Hard Stuff

James Nachtwey, who calls himself an ‘anti-war photographer’, appeared on the Oprah show a few years ago. He was interviewed about his book Inferno, a collection of photographs “disclosing some of today’s harshest examples of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.” From “...Somalia’s famine to genocide in Rwanda, from Romania’s abandoned orphans to the lives of India’s ‘untouchables’, from war in Bosnia to conflict in Chechnya.”^[2] When asked what the ‘ordinary’^[3] individual can do in response to his photos, Nachtwey paused for a long moment and then said, “When confronted with images of pain and suffering, don’t shut down or turn away. Stay engaged. Force yourself to be moved by what you are seeing...Keep it alive emotionally within yourself”.

The Cost of Staying Engaged

Nachtwey is right that we must not shut down in the face of suffering. Feeling something about what we see is the first condition towards making a difference. Of course, this is easier said than done. There are limits to what people are able to tolerate emotionally, especially those who are kind and caring. There are real dangers in exposing ourselves to a lot of suffering and pain, injustice, cruelty, and trauma. This is particularly true for those of us who are at the front line of human tragedy. This includes, but is not limited to, people working in aid and development, those who work in child protection, social workers, foster carers, ambulance officers, police officers, counsellors and psychotherapists, youth workers, domestic abuse support workers, rape support workers, teachers, ministers of religion, prison officers, doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff. It also includes agents of change, or activists. These are people whose life’s work is aimed at saving, or making things better for various groups, animals, the environment, or individuals. By the nature of the work they do, they receive a disproportionate dose of the ‘dark matter’ of life. One of the worst dangers in being exposed to a high dose of ‘dark matter’ is to become overwhelmed, and disillusioned. I think of it as being tempted by the ‘dark side’. The temptation is to begin to believe that darkness is all there is, and that we are powerless against it.

In my profession we call this ‘burnout’, or ‘secondary traumatisation’. Whatever you call it, what happens is that we temporarily lose our ability to feel hope, and see the beauty and goodness that are also in the world, and in humanity. Our perception goes out of balance, and we focus more on the ‘half empty’ part of the glass, instead of the whole glass.

We know a great deal about what happens in the brain at such times, but I do not have enough room to go into it in this article^[4]. The important point here is that burnout, or secondary trauma are not imaginary, and are not a result of weakness, or a character flaw. They are very real neurological, and therefore psychological, spiritual, and physical states that can affect anyone who has a great deal of exposure to the ‘dark side’ of human existence.

When we are confronted with a reality that appears to be all darkness, when we witness, or hear about gross injustice or cruelty, the assault on our limbic brain can cause us to experience a strong sense of danger and threat. We can get angry, feel deep sorrow and despair, even get depressed. Depression is common among people who do good. Depression is what every mammal feels when they are trapped in a bad situation that hurts them, but are powerless to do anything to help themselves.  Like all our emotional experiences, depression is an accurate representation of a lived reality.

Abuse is always inflicted in the context of an imbalance of power. Getting hurt because someone made a genuine mistake, can be awful enough. But it is not the same as abuse. Abuse is intentional. It relies on, and involves the deliberate disempowerment of victims, and the weakening, silencing, or elimination of anyone who tries to help them. Those who intervene either voluntarily, or because it is their job, inevitably resonate emotionally with victims. They would feel everything victims feel, including anger, powerlessness, pain, and depression. In other words, intervening can be, and often is psychologically hazardous. We can feel so threatened, it would trigger our natural instinct to protect ourselves from that horrible darkness. One of the ways to protect ourselves is to remove ourselves and avoid the whole thing. We all have a mammal brain (limbic system). The fight-flight-freeze instincts it triggers and enables in the face of threat are in all of us.

Darkness in the outside world also has the power to trigger our own internal ‘darkness’. Our internal darkness, or ‘shadow’ as Carl Jung called it, contains everything that we prefer not to touch, see or acknowledge within ourselves. For many people the shadow contains a good deal of their own pain and woundedness. People with unresolved trauma are often drawn to try to help others. The reality is that the suffering of others tends to trigger unresolved trauma in people who work for the benefit of others, often with serious consequences to their physical and mental health. 

Even without unresolved trauma, any caring, empathetic human being is likely to be affected by the suffering of others. Of course, it is empathetic people who are more likely to be drawn to helping others. However, people who have a great capacity for empathy are also potentially more vulnerable. That is because they feel more, and can identify more deeply with the suffering of others. They have a great deal of neuroplasticity in the parts of the brain responsible for empathy, which means their brain would respond more robustly.

The purpose of this article is to discuss how you can support yourself, and take better care of yourself while you try to help others, and what areas or issues you need to pay particular attention to. This can also help organisations support their staff better. I am interested in this both as a psychotherapist, and an activist.

This is important for two reasons. One, because you are important. You must not become another casualty of the very thing you are trying to resist, or mitigate. If you do, then the systems or individuals that perpetrate injustice and abuse have just claimed another casualty, and in a way another ‘victory’.

The second reason is that those who do good need to be able to continue their work sustainably. Humanity is getting worse, and we are causing more harm than ever at all levels, or contexts of our existence. We need activists and everyone who does good to do their work for as long as it is needed. If activists drop out with burnout, there will be no one left to try to help humanity change direction, before it is too late.

In order to free ourselves from the self-destructive, and unnecessary patterns we keep repeating we need to supporting what is good in the world. We have to stand up firmly against injustice, and abuse of power, insist on truth, support victims, and model a different way of being, is what humanity needs. We cannot sustain this if we, ourselves, become casualties of the ‘dark side’.

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^[1] See a collection of recent open access climate science papers at the end of the article, under ‘Climate science resources’.

^[2] http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/ (Last accessed 9th May 2017)

^[3] The word ‘ordinary’ here refers to people whose work does not normally involve engaging with planetary and societal problems.

^[4] My book Therapy Without A Therapist goes into the relevant detail, and also offers a practical path forward that anyone can adopt.

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