Nikki Scheiner
Psychological Tips: Managing Anxiety and Fear, Developing Resilience Through Connection
Summary
The war in Israel and its reverberations throughout much of the world have touched every Jewish community. This talk looks at what we can do, as individuals and communities, to manage difficult emotions, support each other, and continue our daily lives.
Nikki Scheiner
Dr. Nikki Scheiner is a London-born consultant psychologist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), acute and chronic stress, and functional neurological disorders (FND). After completing a doctorate in Spanish history and literature and a period of teaching at the University of London and the University of the South Bank, Nikki went on to train as a psychologist. While at the Traumatic Stress Service at St George’s Hospital, London, she treated survivors of war from conflict zones including Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland. She also taught on the War and Psychiatry Master’s program at King’s College, University of London, focusing on the role of women in war. As a volunteer with the Community Security Trust (CST), Nikki designed the Psychological First Aid response in the event of an attack on the Jewish community in the UK. After training the CST Psychological First Aiders, she went on to offer resilience training and crisis management training to community leaders. Nikki is married and has five children. She states that they have been both her biggest psychological challenge and her greatest achievement.
Oh! There will be fear in it. If you read the psychological literature, you will see that there’s a lot of jealousy. And it’s interesting because it’s not. People think that it’s poverty, it’s poverty that causes hatred. But if you look at the literature from the Holocaust and also the people who are protesting the streets round the world, whether it’s Vienna, Barcelona, Sydney, London or Joburg, it’s intellectual. So it’s not about fear. It’s not about the fear that they haven’t got something, they’re never going to have something. I think it may play a part, I think it’s a constituent, I don’t think it’s the major part. And if you think about antisemitism in England and you think that the Jews were expelled in 1290 and I think they were out for 400 years, and the levels of antisemitism didn’t drop. And people didn’t fear the Jews, they weren’t there, but they still hated them. So I think it’s a very complex question and I’m sure I haven’t done it justice, but thank you, it’s an interesting one.
Nothing wrong with crying, Ronald. It’s just… Crying is an indication that we need comfort. So don’t worry. And you might cry, you know, our emotions don’t have a clock. You might cry at three o'clock, you might find yourself crying in the middle of the night, it doesn’t matter. You’re acknowledging your pain and everybody shares that pain.
Oh, goodness, that’s fortune that one, Janet. I don’t think… It depends. If you have babies born to mothers who have high cortisol levels, no, they will have a predisposition, but they’re not born with the type of anxiety. They might be born with adrenaline and, you know, babies born to alcoholics, we know all of these things. I was talking about behaviour as we learn it. So yes, you’re absolutely right, but I think in general, the point I was trying to make is we learn to be anxious. And, you know, we see it. We we see it, it’s mirrored.