The Next Tragedy Is Coming Will You Project—or Will You Reflect?
Charlie Kirk, Evergreen High School Shooting, Iryna Zarutska are real, raw, and opportunities for self reflection
Violence Is Never Neutral
Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week—shot for his politics. Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old refugee, was stabbed to death on a train in North Carolina. On the very same day Kirk was killed, a school shooting in Colorado left families shattered, adding yet another layer to the grief and outrage. Children in Minneapolis never came home from school and were shot alongside elderly parishioners within church walls. Politicians in Minnesota were gunned down in their homes in the middle of the night because of political ideology. Families in Israel and Palestine bury their dead after bombings and shootings.
Different names. Different geographies. Different ideologies.
Same outcome: lives ended violently.
These events are inkblots—tragedies that pull our unconscious reactions to the surface. We all attempt to make meaning from the madness. Senseless killing.
That meaning comes from the past and from within us. It’s messy, complex, and layered. It can be excruciating to sift through it all. And the hardest question is—where do you even begin?
What happens inside of us when the world feels unmanageable?
These tragedies are mirrors. A giant Rorschach test that doesn’t just expose society’s fractures—it drags our private, unresolved wounds into the open. Whether we realize it or not.
I Want to Be Thoughtful and Conscious That This Is a Major Challenge
Violence for ideology, identity, or discrimination is always wrong. Period.
I believe freedom of speech is powerful, and it must be protected—even when it is ugly. That’s the freedom that allows me to write this article and have thought-provoking dialogue with you.
My goal is empathy and shared concern for the challenges the world’s unconscionable suffering brings to all of us.
This recent compilation of events piling on top of one another has been challenging for me.
I have a wife and two children—a boy and a girl.
They are my world.
Hearing children being shot inside their school is terrifying to me as a parent and as a therapist. I worry about my kids being victims to a sense act of violence and I have to trust others to protect them and they may not be able to.
I also believe that the Constitution and protecting people’s freedoms and rights are incredibly powerful to this country being great and free. Freedom is chaos and incredible to allow us to create the best versions of ourselves to the potential that we believe we have.
I watched Charlie Kirk be shot for having strong, differing opinions about others in politics, religion, and mental health, and I felt a deep sadness for his wife, children, family, friends, and supporters. I see myself in this—challenging people in their rigid beliefs about themselves and their relationships in order to shake them out of those rigid beliefs.
I also wrestle with the need for empathy and compassion for those who are different, who may still be trying to figure out their lives and identity—those who are vulnerable, insecure, and longing for connection. I want to be able to hold multiple truths with open emotional curiosity, without condescension. I want to see their humanity and honor the wrestling that comes with complex feelings and perspectives.
I have also projected onto Charlie Kirk’s children and widow, as this reminds me of my mother passing away rapidly from skin cancer and leaving behind me (11 years old), my sister (6 years old), and my father (36 years old).
I myself have had thoughts of dying young because of my mother’s age when she passed. I am her age now when she died (36). Charlie was 31.
I think about my wife commuting into Manhattan years ago—she could have been the one stabbed on a train, just for trying to go to work and make the world a better place. Just like young Iryna.
I also see the major challenges we face in addressing mental illness and access to effective, reasonable care. I see treatment-resistant mental illness being brutal for families and loved ones living with severe mental illness. Limited resources, fear, and limited understanding make these challenges overwhelming—especially for those outside the field.
I think about the challenges of having a family and all that is required to keep it functional, healthy, and stable. I cannot imagine the compounding challenges of people who are living with war and terrorism—trying to live their lives under constant threat of dying from an air strike in their home or while attending a music festival with friends enjoying being young, wild, and free.
This and many other deeper and personal connections unconsciously within me have me arrested—struggling to comprehend the unfathomable destruction of what people can do and how out of control the world’s challenges feel.
These are the projections and the tensions that stand out within me.
They leave me stuck.
This is where I feel helpless and struggle to balance both aspects of my beliefs and care at the same time.
I think this is a shared feeling most people can relate to.
Do you struggle with this too?
The Universal Experience of Helplessness
Most of us feel powerless. The body tightens. Thoughts spiral. We grasp for certainty. We crave control. We crave our voice and feelings to matter. We need to know we have significance to others.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a parent or a politician, a soldier or a child—helplessness is universal and varied.
When we are small children, we struggle with a sense of having to react and respond to our experiences and circumstances. We crave connection on a visceral and instinctual level. It’s hardwired. And within this dynamic, we observe, take notes—both unconsciously and consciously—and make sense of how and why we try to take control and find significance.
How We Try to Escape It
We all find ways to run from helplessness: projection, outrage, schadenfreude, tribalism, numbing, maladaptive family-of-origin modeling, or our own past self-soothing strategies.
At our worst, we may seek violence, retribution, or take justice into our own hands.
Family systems theory shows us why.
Within our family dynamics, we watched people we loved navigate helplessness in different ways: some exploded, some numbed, some controlled, some avoided, and some became violent and aggressive. We repeat those same patterns now, or we look for others doing the same and attempt to anticipate what’s going to happen—just like it did in the past. It creates a false sense of certainty. And the problem is, we don’t realize whether or not it’s false.
How Do We Navigate This?
Projection: we hurl our unresolved pain onto public figures or enemies—and in my profession, sometimes even onto the people we deeply love.
Enmeshment: we fuse our identity to a cause so tightly that another person’s loss feels like our victory. Pain is a greater bonder than pleasure.
Lack of differentiation: we can’t hold two truths at once—so we collapse into tribal righteousness instead of human reflection. Being able to see complexity only makes us more helpless and scared. We want simple. We need certainty. We believe simplification and hive-mind connection is safest.
When someone who triggers us is harmed, we sometimes feel satisfaction. That schadenfreude isn’t about them. It’s about us. It’s about the powerless teenager inside of us who was mocked, dismissed, or dominated.
When violence touches a public figure or someone who mirrors a deeper painful dynamic from our relationship past we may feel inside a sense of ourselves saying:
Finally, justice!
We feel a sense of something cosmic being corrected—that a past wrong against us has been made right.
Multidirectional Partiality
Every perspective holds some element of truth. Some understanding that can be broken deeper into. This requires deep, open emotional curiosity though.
That’s the core element of emotional intelligence.
It allows two perspectives to exist at the same time. One does not cancel the other. They co-exist.
Human experience is layered, not binary.
That’s what makes tragedy so destabilizing.
As one of my brilliant clients once said: two projections, projected onto one screen.
Overlapping realities allow connection and nuance.
This is exactly the complexity and process that can work through conflict to allow for deeper and more meaningful connection. It requires the open emotional curiosity I have expressed in previous articles. If you haven’t read them, just do a quick search for them on this Substack.
The Internet as Amplifier
The ability to find others who share your perspective and feelings is powerful. But the lack of empathy and the absence of witnessing the real impact of your words can be dangerous. Online, we feel the power of emotionally impacting others, and with that comes a sense of certainty and significance—two very basic human needs.
But that same amplification often leaves us more divided, not less. It also allows us to become more detached, to believe that violence and harming others is a reasonable option and one that we will feel a sense of connection and significance around.
Two main things again that may be missing for a variety of different reasons. Both being met in the echo chamber of the internet or even more dangerous.
Artificial intelligence.
Practical Reflection Questions
When tragedy shocks me, do I move toward blame, toward tribal identity, or toward quiet self-inquiry?
What old memory of being powerless does this echo in me—at home, at school, in my earliest relationships?
How do I usually escape that helplessness—through outrage, withdrawal, certainty, or seeking allies?
Which family-of-origin patterns am I replaying when I react this way? Who did I learn it from?
If multiple truths can coexist, which ones am I resisting because they threaten my need for certainty?
When I see tragedy, do I rush to anger, to certainty, or to despair?
What’s the earliest time I remember feeling powerless like this?
What do you think these tragedies touch on that’s deeper and more meaningful to you?
Conclusion: Self-Mastery or Endless Projection
We cannot control assassins, armies, or algorithms. But we can confront our own helplessness. That’s the only power that lasts.
We’ve spent too long making the world our mirror while refusing to look at ourselves. Every tragedy this year proves the same thing: we project, we collapse, we outsource blame. But until we master what’s inside of us, we’ll keep justifying violence, keep reproducing the same cycles, and keep mistaking ignorance wrapped in identity for righteousness.
The next tragedy is coming. The question is—will you project? Or will you reflect?
Will you seek open emotional curiosity to care through the complexity, or collapse into simplicity and divisiveness to feel a possible false sense of certainty?
Let me know your thoughts, and please be respectful, as I have attempted to be really thoughtful in this piece of writing. I’ve injected a lot of myself and the challenges I face in my processing in order for others to feel a little less alone.
I look forward to hearing from you...
Thanks for this thoughtful message. Sending love to you and the family. We’ll all get through this ❤️