Comfortably Numb

Constant exposure to violence unfolding in different regions across the globe is reshaping how people process suffering, with many experiencing psychic numbing or compassion fatigue

- Zenaira Bakhsh

“INSIDE me there is crying and heartbreak, but I cannot shed tears.

The peak of tragedy is to lose the ability to cry.

Even the voices inside me are suffocated because words are meaningless in the presence of the images of death that surround us from all directions.

Nothing remains. Everything has gone.

I am not well. Not well at all.”

These are the words of Sondos Arafat, a 30-year-old Palestinian woman who writes poetry to make sense of the grief that surrounds her. In one of her poems, she describes a life marked by relentless loss, from the killing of her lecturer to the destruction of her home. She says she aches while she writes, translating her pain into words, as if to prove to the world that she is still alive.

But for much of the world watching from afar, the violence unfolding across West Asia, from Palestine to Iran, Yemen, Sudan and Syria, often appears as a stream of numbers: death tolls, casualty figures and breaking news alerts. Mass killings, once stories of individual lives, are increasingly processed as statistics rather than human tragedies.

For many across the globe, the images are deeply distressing. Videos and photographs from places like Gaza circulate widely online, breaking hearts, triggering anxiety and leaving many feeling helpless. Yet distance, both physical and digital, also allows a degree of escape. When the stream of violence becomes overwhelming, people can step away from their screens, mute certain words or shift their attention elsewhere.

Experts say this constant exposure is reshaping how people process suffering, with many experiencing what psychologists describe as desensitisation, sometimes referred to as psychic numbing or compassion fatigue.