Yes, Israel is a Settler Colonialist State. And…?
When I think about the ongoing murderous conflict between Israel and Palestine and the global reaction to it, I think about therapy. Not about the lifetime of mental health therapy that the people impacted by the horrors of October 7 and the subsequent war are invariably going to need, but about my own therapy, specifically my experience with dialectical behavior therapy or DBT.
DBT is a form of psychotherapy designed to help people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by exploring the triggers that lead to reactive states and assessing possible coping mechanisms that can be applied to events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to avoid undesired reactions. What makes it ‘dialectic’ is the centrality of the synthesis of acceptance and change-oriented strategies, or, in the words of DBT inventor Marsha Linehan, “a synthesis or integration of opposites.”
To put it another way, DBT is predicated on the fact that two seemingly opposed states of affairs can be simultaneously true. It’s all about falling in love with the word ‘and’ — arguably the single most important word in the English language.
For example, it can be true that a person is clinically depressed, AND it is also true that depression is not a death sentence and there are many courses of action a person can take to alleviate depression…
