On Saturday, 28 February, for many of us, one of our biggest fears came true. The US and Israel bombed more than 900 targets in Iran in a period of about 12 hours.
Iran, predictably, retaliated by launching waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and several Arab Gulf states that host US military bases, including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE.
Unsurprisingly, this brings a vast amount of fear and uncertainty into everyone’s lives. If you’ve been wondering why you feel so concerned about something that is happening many thousands of kilometres away from South Africa, it may help to turn to psychology and examine the mental health price most of us pay for war.
Need for safety
If we look at the work of the US psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), who is probably best known for his five-tiered Hierarchy of Needs, we start to get an understanding of why a war that is more than 6,500km from SA is affecting our mental health.
Maslow’s core idea is that individuals must satisfy lower-level basic needs before progressing to meet higher-level growth needs (the linearity of this theory has been questioned by modern researchers). At the lowest level we find that our physiological needs, like food, water, warmth and rest, need to be satisfied before our security needs, most basically for safety and security, can be attended to.
These safety and security needs relate to the foundation of our “predictable world”; it’s about seeking certainty and reducing uncertainty. These include the need to feel physically safe and protected. Even if a war is far away, seeing images of it can trick the nervous system into feeling that our physical safety is fragile. These feelings can trigger a state of hypervigilance, which can put our already strained nervous systems under more pressure, increasing our emotional and physical vulnerability.
Yet, in modern society, we probably experience the need for financial and resource security as our most prominent safety need. In this regard, we seek job security, savings and insurance. War, even remote ones, can threaten our financial stability. We know for a fact that when the oil price increases, we pay more for fuel, triggering food inflation. This threatens not only our first-tier needs (physiological, like food), but also our daily financial existence (second tier).
Additionally, our health and wellbeing needs form part of our security needs. We need to experience our environment (home and work) as emotionally safe spaces where we won’t experience trauma or extreme distress. Workspaces can be tricky in this regard, as they can be a melting pot of cultures, religions and philosophical beliefs. War in the Middle East frequently stirs sociopolitical controversies in the West that go beyond policy and defence. These issues, often centred on religion and human rights, can permeate the office, directly affecting emotional safety at work.
As humans, we are pattern-seeking. It is in patterns that we find our safety and security. We need to feel that the world operates by a set of rules that won’t suddenly change. We need a functioning legal system, social stability and clear expectations for us to experience safety. When global leaders are killed or international borders are threatened, this sense of predictable order is shattered. This is often why we feel emotionally and physically shaken even when we are physically safe.
Our concept of a predictable world has been damaged, which leads to the anxiety factor ruling our lives. Anxiety thrives on uncertainty. The rapid escalation of Operation Epic Fury and the threats to global energy and shipping lanes create a world that feels inherently unsafe and unpredictable.
Maslow argued that if our safety needs aren’t met, a person becomes “safety obsessed”, making any threat to our safety feel worse than it really is.
The ‘digital frontline’
In 2026, we don’t just hear about war; we witness it in real time. With the internet blackouts in Iran and the sudden flood of graphic, user-generated content that follows, our nervous systems are being hit with indirect exposure to trauma. Frequent consumption of war-related media can trigger peritraumatic distress, which is a physical and emotional reaction that mimics being in the danger zone itself, and it can be presented as secondary trauma.
Seeing and digitally experiencing this conflict activates the amygdala in our brain, triggering a fight-or-flight response. This floods our bodies with cortisol and adrenaline (the stress hormones). Even with the threat not in our backyard, our body releases these hormones as if it were, leaving us feeling anxious and stressed.
Collective trauma
With the ever-shrinking world we live in, we are more aware than ever of our shared humanity. Seeing the destruction and fear of civilians in Tehran or the Gulf states triggers a collective trauma where the breakdown of safety in one part of the world feels like a breakdown of safety everywhere.
Our collective trauma is increased if we identify with those involved, whether through shared values, culture, religion, profession or simply our universal desire for peace.
Because this conflict involves massive geopolitical forces, we feel a sense of paralytic anxiety, or a “freeze” response in our bodies. We want to help, but the scale of the crisis feels not only beyond individual reach, but also so much bigger than us, which causes feelings of helplessness and uselessness. When we stay in this emotional space for long, the chemical overwhelm (cortisol and adrenaline) can lead to emotional exhaustion or even burnout.
What now?
It is our individual responsibility to ensure our sustained mental health during these periods of extreme uncertainty, and safety and security threats. We are, and will always be, pack beings, and don’t exist in a vacuum, but we cannot outsource our mental health to others. We need to take responsibility for what we can in a time in which we have very little control over the whats and hows.
Take note of the following to support your mental health:
- Limit news and social media engagement if you tend to find reporting on war and related issues upsetting; especially when your nervous system is activated. The power is always in our hands to say no to material we do not wish to engage with. Just because the articles and videos are online, doesn’t mean that we need to read or watch them.
- When you choose to engage or have a need to be informed, be discerning about the publications and outlets you use. Ensure that you only consume material from reputable publishers who subscribe to the appropriate journalistic codes and who treasure the wellbeing of their consumers. These outlets warn of potential disturbing material and stick to the truth in their reporting.
- It is important that we learn to listen to our bodies and understand the messages they send us. A body being triggered by upsetting material will send us signals. Watch out for the following signs and stop what you’re doing if you don’t want to go into fight-or-flight mode:
- Shallow or rapid breathing.
- Jaw clenching, teeth grinding, or fist balling.
- Sudden heat flush or cold sweat
- Feeling of butterflies or a sudden knot in the stomach.
- Your eyes darting around the room.
- Becoming incredibly sensitive to small sounds (like a ticking clock or a distant conversation).
Signs of our nervous systems going into freeze may include:
- Feeling spaced out, numb, or like there is a glass wall between you and the world (dissociation).
- Limbs feeling like lead; a sudden, overwhelming urge to sleep or lie down
- Your voice might become monotone, or you might find it physically difficult to find words (losing your “voice”).
- Hands and feet become icy as circulation pulls toward the internal organs. DM
Freddie van Rensburg is a specialist wellness counsellor (ASCHP), addiction counsellor (BAPSA), and recovery coach. He’s the author of two books: The First Layer: Work through the 12 steps in 21 days, and Life Anon: A 12-step guide to life.