Journalists were dragged and thrown over a ledge. They had their cameras smashed on the pavement. My colleague and I were accosted by snarling men and women. Video of me, unflinching, circulated. Many who saw it said journalists must have \u201cnerves of steel.\u201d People lauded the \u201ccalm\u201d and \u201cgrace\u201d I showed in defusing the situation with humor. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the loss of control and ashamed I\u2019d stood frozen for so long.<\/p>\n
I can be composed under pressure because I\u2019ve been reporting for two decades. But don\u2019t mistake composure for calm. I was afraid of provoking the mob. Ashli Babbitt had just been shot inside the Capitol, and people were looking for someone to blame.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019d yelled or run, would they have physically attacked? Faced with fight or flight, my brain chose freeze. I disassociated temporarily, watching myself get called a Nazi for doing my job. Other journalists filmed on their phones but didn\u2019t intervene because, after all, I looked calm, and it was news.<\/p>\n
Journalists make order out of chaos to help others understand what\u2019s unfolding. Perhaps this allows the brain to protect itself in the short term. We did our jobs at the Capitol. We returned home. We worked in isolation, telling a quarantined, <\/i>unvaccinated world about the history we had witnessed. And then, without pause, we prepared for Joe Biden\u2019s inauguration, which would draw many of the same journalists back to the building where they were lucky not to have died.<\/p>\n
In truth, Jan. 6 was too upsetting for the brain to process normally. We may tell ourselves we\u2019re \u201crattled but fine.\u201d But a nervous system flooded by trauma isn\u2019t fine. Trauma is a psychological injury that lulls you into thinking you\u2019re safe after surviving without a scratch, only to wash away the ground you thought would hold firm.<\/p>\n
As the psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem teaches, over time, a person\u2019s trauma can look like personality. Growing angry with the banal. Insomnia. Drinking. Scanning everywhere for threats. Maybe this is simply how you are. Or maybe you\u2019re tying your shoes with broken fingers.<\/p>\n
Each journalist covering the insurrection swam in different parts of an ocean, the manifestations of our injuries as different as we are. Some arrived late, after the breach, and said they\u2019d seen worse. They seemed barely affected. Others still jump at loud noises, have nightmares, suffer panic attacks.<\/p>\n
![\"Trauma](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.apa.org\/images\/trauma-title-image_tcm7-188657.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
For me, Jan. 6 was just the beginning. In the days after, my \u201ccalm\u201d and \u201cgrace\u201d looked different off camera. I made trips to the bathroom between interviews with \u201cMorning Joe\u201d and Indian television as adrenaline and cortisol shot through my nervous system, straight to my bowels. I stayed productive at work but skipped doing laundry, afraid I might be attacked in my basement.<\/p>\n
I avoided Jan. 6 news and, with therapy, started feeling okay. But months later, I had a flashback so real that I no longer saw the house I was in, nor the childhood friend I was with. Instead, I was at the Capitol, and he, in my mind, was a rioter. I screamed for him to back away \u2014 what I didn\u2019t tell the insurrectionists.<\/p>\n
Eventually I spent a week at what I like to refer to as \u201ctrauma camp.\u201d Yes, there were s\u2019mores. Even better, there were other people with trauma, ready to heal from past psychological injuries keeping them from living fully today.<\/p>\n
Until then, I\u2019d felt like I didn\u2019t have a right to post-traumatic stress disorder. We knew Capitol police were traumatized, some so much they took their lives. Members of Congress were nervous returning to work. We wrote those stories. But journalists aren\u2019t supposed to be the story. So we normalize hypervigilance, emotional numbness, catastrophic thoughts.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to heal from an invisible wound when newsrooms using the vocabulary of trauma still aren\u2019t fluent in the language. Colleagues remarked that having PTSD in the past \u2014 I once saw a source after he was fatally shot in the head \u2014 should make this easier.<\/p>\n
We need to understand that the toughness that makes journalists good at their jobs can also make them sick. Keeping trauma in the shadows only reinforces a culture that lauds us for the courage we show under fire, rather than for the bravery of saying we\u2019re hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cRarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation,\u201d the late bell hooks wrote. \u201cHealing is an act of communion.\u201d I now bond with others who know healing from trauma is nonlinear. And a year later, I\u2019m making friends with my nervous system, which still sometimes fires false alarms. \u201cThanks for trying to protect me,\u201d I tell it. \u201cI don\u2019t need you right now. But I know you\u2019ll be there when I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Kate Woodsome On Jan. 6, 2021, I spent hours weaving through the pro-Trump mob, interviewing anti-government mercenaries and families duped into believing the 2020 election had been stolen. As rioters climbed the Capitol walls and bludgeoned an overwhelmed police force, they cracked a defense we thought impenetrable: democracy itself. Journalists were dragged and thrown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-january-6-2021"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2704,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/2704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillsusan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}