The world is once again trying to come to terms with their emotions as they try to cope with two more terror attacks: multiple bombings in and around Paris, and a suicide bombing in Beirut on the 12th of November where 43 people lost their lives and 239 were wounded.
Understanding that these events have a huge impact in the lives of those people directly involved is easy, but they were not the only people who were affected. People miles away from the attacks also feel the wrath of these terrorists without even knowing a single victim. These events also impact their lives.
So the million dollar question people are trying to answer is "Why does terrorism affect us so much?"
Well, acts of terrorism can strike two basic parts of the human mind. These parts of the mind have somehow managed to help us make it through life over the past years and simultaneously still continue to cause us stress, worry, and fear.
It was found that acts of terrorism mess up our basic sense of how the world is. Generally, our mind is sure that the world is a safe and predictable place, and when these events present in front of us, our main coping system, the fight or flight response, is always at its peak when it responds to specific situations at a very limited time frame. Our body is usually able to fight for a short time, and we can also just run for a few minutes making it still very short if you really think about it.
Following a terror attack, however, many of our senses are disrupted, so ultimately our fight or flight are messed up too making it unusually elevated making us usually very jumpy. For some people though, the fear response seems a little difficult to shut off.
Acts of terrorism also appears to increase our awareness in the idea that somehow, life will end. Terror management theory, a theory from social psychology, suggests that humans have their own unique way in recognizing their own vulnerabilities and their knowledge that they are not invincible. These acts of terrorism were also found to elevate our awareness about the basic human vulnerabilities and usually can cause us to be chronically worried, depressed, or distressed.
