Transcending Trauma: A Psychologist on How to Heal — and How to Help Your Children Heal — After Catastrophic Loss
- Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A.
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
MBC1 — SABAH AL KHAIR YA ARAB ·
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A., DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist, joined the hosts of MBC1's Sabah Al Khair Ya Arab on August 4, 2022 — the second anniversary of the Beirut port explosion — to discuss one of the most challenging things a psychologist is ever asked to address: how do you help people heal from a trauma that cannot be explained, justified, or resolved?
The Mind Struggles to Comprehend What Cannot Be Justified
When a catastrophic event occurs — a sudden explosion, a mass casualty incident, the kind of event that strips people of everything in a matter of seconds — the rational mind does what it is built to do: it searches for an explanation. It looks for cause and effect. It tries to find a reason that makes sense of the suffering.
In the case of something like the Beirut explosion, that search finds nothing. The scale of the loss, the apparent randomness of who survived and who did not, the sense that nothing will be put right — these are things the rational mind cannot metabolise cleanly. And that inability to metabolise is precisely what makes collective traumas of this kind so psychologically complex.
Transcending Is Not Forgetting
Transcending a trauma means accepting that it happened — fully, without minimisation — and then choosing to move forward. It means refusing to let the event become a permanent ceiling on your life. You carry the memory. You acknowledge the loss. But you do not allow it to freeze you in place.
Acceptance is not agreement. It is not approval. It is a decision to reclaim your life from a past event.
Transcendental Meditation: Training the Brain to Go Beyond What Cannot Be Resolved
Practised twice daily, TM trains new neural pathways in the brain — and what makes it particularly relevant to trauma is what it teaches the mind to do: move beyond the surface level of thinking.
The mind has layers. At the surface is the rational, logical mind — the part searching for explanations, replaying events, trying to make sense of what happened. This is also the layer that gets stuck in trauma loops, because it keeps returning to a problem that has no satisfying answer at the rational level.
Below the rational mind is the layer of intuition and emotion. And deeper still is self-referral consciousness: a state of pure, quiet, settled awareness — free from the need to resolve and explain and justify. When we access this through TM, we move into a level of the mind where acceptance is not a forced decision but a natural state. The weight of the trauma does not disappear, but our relationship to it changes fundamentally.
How to Support Someone Who Is Suffering
One of the most instinctive things people do is avoid talking about the trauma. It feels kind — a way of protecting the person from reliving their pain.
In reality, avoidance does the opposite.
To process a traumatic experience, the mind needs to engage with it. When we avoid all reminders and all conversations about what happened, we push the experience further down, where it cannot be processed and where it continues to exert pressure from beneath the surface. What actually helps is allowing people to express their feelings out loud — sitting with someone in their pain without rushing to fix it.
On Anger, Security, and the Healing Power of Peace
The anger after collective trauma is completely valid. But there is a difference between what the political situation needs and what the people around you need right now.
One of the most significant healing factors after trauma is a restored sense of security. When we transmit our own dysregulation — even through tone of voice and body language — we destabilise the nervous systems of the people around us. A parent who is visibly terrified transmits that terror to their children without a single word.
This is not an argument for suppressing your feelings. It is an argument for doing your own work — so you can be a genuine source of calm for those who need it from you.
Faith as an Anchor
In the Arab world, faith is often the foundation of psychological wellbeing — not a supplement to it. Our perspective as human beings is limited; we see a fraction of what exists. Faith tells us the world is not random, that there is justice operating on a timeline larger than our own. This allows the rational mind to rest, to release the part we cannot control into a framework larger than our individual capacity. Islam's emphasis on patience is not weakness — it is active, grounded endurance.
When Children Carry Trauma They Cannot Name
Children can absorb the full weight of a traumatic event without understanding it, and without expressing distress in ways adults recognise. Trauma in children often does not look like sadness. It looks like hypervigilance, worst-case-scenario thinking, nightmares, and a persistent negative view of the world and themselves.
The PTSD symptoms to watch for in children:
Hyperarousal — easily startled, always on edge, unable to relax
Negative worldview — a shift from "the world is relatively safe" to "danger is everywhere"
Intrusive re-experiencing — nightmares, flashbacks, mentally reliving the event
Avoidance — refusing to engage with anything that reminds them of it
Some degree of these responses immediately after trauma is completely normal. They become clinically significant when they persist beyond two months. That is the point to consult a psychologist. Early intervention matters — the sooner a child receives structured support, the less likely the trauma becomes embedded in development.
About Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A. is a DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist (License No. DHA-75083705) based in Dubai, and UAE Director of the Transcendental Meditation Organization. She has been featured on MBC, MBC1, Sky News Arabia, Dubai TV, and BBC Arabic, and is the founder of the online courses Anxiety 101 (Level 1) and Master Yourself (Level 2).
Related reading: Why People Hide Suicidal Thoughts
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