Sometimes I imagine I am looking down on earth from far out in space. I see the green and blue glow of our planet lit up by the sun, and the misty white clouds circling above this landscape we are so blessed to inhabit. I think about rainforests and dolphins and the hummingbirds I love to watch in the summertime around my backyard feeders. It is such a beautiful world. And then I think of us humans, the farmers and teachers, philanthropists and volunteers, old people and newborn babies, clean houses and the homeless, and all the people going hungry while others have more food and more money than they can ever consume. I think of a child sold into sex trafficking and the person willing to purchase that child’s body, and I think of war, of thousands and millions of people being killed by other people. I can’t help but feel we are a glorious mystery and often unspeakably cruel.

I understand that animals kill other animals for food and that we all need to eat from other living kingdoms to stay alive. I understand that it is part of being mortal that some creatures die so that others can live. But we humans are the only ones who kill out of hatred, greed, and belief systems that do not allow for alternate views or lifestyles. We are the only ones who purposely abuse and kill our own children and systematically kill millions of our own species. Stepping outside and far above my personal wants and needs of the day, beyond the latest news of who got elected and who didn’t and what is the latest threat from climate change– from that removed point of view it looks very much like the human race is suffering from a serious auto-immune disorder, but it’s not a disease of the body; it is a disease of the heart and mind. It is a mental illness. And from far above the fray, I hear the cries of the wounded above all the noise of politicians and the angry voices of a fired-up mob going after a Black or gay person, a woman, or even someone trying to help.

The hope of everything I do is that we listen to our own cries, that we recognize them for what they are and are not afraid to act, not frightened into silence, and not provoked into aggression. My hope is that we can learn to hear our own cries the way good parents hear the cries of their children when they are in injured, sick, terrified, or under attack.

To do this, we must learn how to step outside the victim and perpetrator cycle in our own behaviors and attitudes. One of the keys is to understand that the worst symptoms—violent aggression, dangerous passivity, and insidious collusion with abuse, as well as the direct cries of pain of those most targeted and injured—all are a Cry for Help!

We know this now without a doubt from our work with families in our individual psychotherapy offices. Like a bursting appendix, the most symptomatic among us are those crying loudest for immediate intervention, The severity of their symptoms, whether it be that they freeze in the face of abuse of their own children, or they murder innocent first graders, lets us know something is terribly amiss not only in the individual family but in the Family of America as a whole. Our most disturbed behaviors on all fronts are screaming at us to come to our own rescue. It is the climate of abuse and mental illness affecting so many of us that keeps us from hearing our own cries or taking them seriously. It is the climate of abuse that has us looking for who to blame rather than who needs help and healing. This is the Terror of the Situation.

It is the best of what psychology has taught us that holds Hope for Our Country. Why because psychology is committed to the repair of broken human relationships. It is committed to healing both the causes and the aftereffects of violence. It is committed to reconnection to one another and ourselves, to restoring us to Safety, Peace, and Love. That is why I wrote America in Therapy.