I’m a Therapist. Here’s what Happened the Day I Met with Both an Arab and a Jew.

(The following piece is by Dr. Carl R. Nassar, Ph.D., LPC, CIIPTS)

It’s a Tuesday morning. A world away, more than two hundred hostages are held captive in the underground caverns of Gaza. I’m in my office—an upstairs loft in the heart of Old Town in Fort Collins, Colorado—and I’m caught a little off guard when my client Paul tells me that he feels he’s also being held hostage. He explains that, of course, he’s not physically being held hostage, but rather, emotionally.

All around the world, he reminds me, on college campuses and on iPhones and tablets and laptops, anti-Semitism is on the rise. He pulls out his phone and shows me TikTok dancing to anti-Semitism, X tweeting out hatred toward Jews.

While the hostages in Gaza are trapped by external captors, Paul is held captive by his mind. TikTok and X and the daily news have convinced him his world isn’t safe. Even venturing to my office was risky business.

He tells me that when he leaves my office, people will see an imaginary Jewish badge pinned to his chest, like the star of David Nazis made Jews wear from 1939 to 1945. Everyone will know he’s Jewish, and something bad will happen to him. He might get beat up or killed. “The world is not a safe place anymore,” he declares.

He’s deeply troubled that more is not being done, that presidents and prime ministers around the world aren’t denouncing anti-Semitism, and those who are aren’t doing much more of it,…