How terrorism changes all our lives (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

How terrorism changes all our lives

3:07pm Monday 17th July 2006 in

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COPING WITH TERRORISM: DREAMS INTERRUPTED. Publisher: Vintage; Author: Carole Lieberman; Price: £9.99.

The devastating al-Qaeda terror attacks of 9/11 and 7/7 slashed through the West's perceived blanket of immunity to terrorism, and permanently changed the realities of daily life for every single citizen.

The threat of terrorism is perhaps the starkest assault on our collective peace of mind to date, but with the one-year anniversary of the London bombings falling this Friday, US psychiatrist Carole Lieberman, author of new book Coping With Terrorism, says that dealing with our fears and anxieties is our best weapon against potential future attacks.

"On an individual level we need to take back control of our lives, because without acknowledging how we feel and getting help, we are making ourselves all the more vulnerable to terrorists," she explains.

"The threat of terrorism is not like any other threat that we have encountered in our lifetimes because it is so overwhelming. When there are other threats, such as car accidents or perhaps contracting a terminal illness, there are measures that we can try to do to protect ourselves but terrorism is so random that we find ourselves at a loss as to what we can do.

"The threat of global terrorism has been around for many years but 9/11 woke us all up to how powerful this threat can be, and 7/7 made it even worse because it made us realise that it wasn't just one isolated event - now another significant event had happened in another Western country," she added.

Lieberman said. "The relationship that we have with our leaders is much like the one we used to have of our parents - and now there is this huge fear that they can no longer protect us from such events, and that they simply don't know how to cope with it. The fact that many people, both in the US and the UK, also feel that they have been lied to only makes this anxiety worse."