I’m listening to a fascinating audiobook, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. One of the authors, talking about the collective trauma of people living under the control of a demanding bully, states an important precondition for recovering from trauma — communicating and being heard. There are few things more comforting, when you are in turmoil, than feeling truly heard.

A person forbidden to speak honestly, and blamed for having a problem, will never be able to free themselves from the pain of abuse. The truth of this statement becomes very obvious once you hear it, particularly if you’ve ever lived the need to explain your side of a story you are angrily not allowed to tell.

Trauma takes over your body after you are mistreated and hurt, and then, instead of being listened to with sympathy, are harshly blamed and censored. When your feelings are dismissed by the people you go to for support, the trap of trauma closes around you. It is this lack of empathy from those you trust that sears the traumatic event into a lifelong disability. Abandonment by others underscores the painful feeling of hopeless isolation that is one of the hallmarks of trauma.

I had a rabbi/fundraiser friend, an old, close friend of mine, tell me, after a year of my struggle to make peace with two mutual friends of five decades, adamant in their insistence that I am insanely unforgiving and unloving, that he had already made it clear that he’d never speak to me about them or to them about me. “If that’s not good enough for you, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he concluded.

Set and match, actually. No amount of talk or understanding, no honest peacemaking, can resolve this conflict, this close mutual friend of ours concluded. There is only eternal enmity for both of you and your permanent ostracism from the entire group of old friends who take no side, except that they can never forgive someone who can never forgive. If you have a problem with that, asshole, what do you want me to do? If you expect me to listen to “your side”, with any kind of sympathy, when you are so wrong, you’re truly nuts. If the suddenly severely limited friendship I offer is not good enough for you, I don’t know what else to say, except fuck off and die, my friend.

I’m thinking about this universally admired dickhead a lot in the days leading up to another Yom Kippur, high holy day of the righteous and unbearable hypocrite alike. He claimed, during our last calm chat (after I’d exerted myself to extend him the chance to talk like a mensch one last time), to have had unconditional love from his parents during his childhood. He had already demonstrated, in his wild attack while attempting to silence me the last time we spoke, that he was lying about unconditional love too, to himself and to me. Someone who was raised with unconditional love does not explode in rage when an old friend is in pain.

We live and learn in this world, or we remain perpetual two year-olds, ready to explode in rage any time we feel frustrated, instead of calmly listening to people who have always treated us with kindness when we needed it.