Sharon Frazer-Carroll: So Much Trouble in the World

So Much Trouble in the World – Please Change the Channel

As we move through the winter and cooler days stretch into longer, darker nights it can be hard to recall how we felt in the summer not long passed.  In particular, this year I find myself musing on the difficulty of recalling the fear and tension I experienced in connection with the August 2024 UK race riots. Though the riots sparked headlines and ignited streets, as we enter winter, they have already begun to fade from collective memory—both mine and, it seems, the media, politicians, and others who were impacted.

As a psychotherapist, I find myself reflecting on our profession’s role in helping people hold onto, or perhaps healthily process, the difficult realities we are inclined to forget. What role might we play in breaking the repetitive cycles of chaos and destruction that feel so endemic? Our world appears locked in reactivity—an endless loop of outbursts followed by clean-up, with little meaningful, sustained intervention to address the root causes. The racial tensions I’ve witnessed throughout my life often manifest in this way, with flares of anger quickly subsiding and just as quickly being smoothed over, without addressing the underlying, systemic injustices that reinforce systems of oppression and continue to reverberate under the surface.

The Weight of the World: Trouble & Turmoil All Around

Bob Marley’s 1979 anthem So Much Trouble in the World feels as pertinent today as it did then. War, conflict, and heartache spill out from every corner of the globe, and in the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns, it seems as though this has accelerated. Growing up, I recall the anticipation around the News at 6 or News at 10, when the adults around me congregated, seeking information. Growing up in a Caribbean family, June 1971 brought special excitement with the launch of the West Indian World, a weekly newspaper where Caribbeans in the UK could glean something about events ‘Back Home’ in the islands they had left behind.  Today, the news is omnipresent, yet I find myself, like many, withdrawing from it—seeking refuge from its relentlessness.

This summer, during the UK race riots, I felt an uneasy push and pull with the news cycle. On one hand, I needed to know where the violence was unfolding; on the other, I could only absorb so much before it overwhelmed me. Following a knife attack in Southport on July 29th, 2024, tensions erupted across the country, as rioters targeted mosques and immigration centres in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool, and many parts of London. While the link between the attack and immigration was widely discredited, the violence continued unabated. Over 4,000 arrests followed in what has been described as the most significant public disorder in the UK since the 2011 riots (Downs, 2024).

From Safety to Fear and Suspicion

As the riots unfolded, I found myself navigating not just the physical spaces of danger but also the psychological terrain of mistrust. Who could I trust? Who might harbour secret prejudices beneath cordial smiles? My daughter, now 29, voiced a similar confusion, wondering aloud where all this hate had come from. It was as though an invisible line had been crossed, and previously latent feelings of animosity were suddenly on full display. This speaks to the psychoanalytic idea of the “return of the repressed”—unconscious racial fears and resentments, long buried beneath the surface, erupting in violent outbursts. It raises uncomfortable questions about how we live with the disowned parts of ourselves and our societies.

Social media exacerbated the sense of chaos, feeding into a collective paranoia, amplifying fear. I saw images circulating that portrayed bikers in Walthamstow (North London not far from my home) on the rampage, flares alight—images later revealed to be old footage, misappropriated. In this distortion of reality, we see what psychoanalysis might term “projective identification” at play: emotions such as fear and hatred are disavowed, then projected onto the “other” through misinformation, feeding a cycle of attack and defence.

The Fleeting Nature of Feelings and the Resilience of Defence

In the aftermath of the riots, the fear I had felt—so visceral in the moment—seemed to dissolve, replaced by an eerie sense of normalcy. As anti-racist protesters flooded the streets, and my neighbours smiled once again, it was as though the tension had lifted. Yet, the experience reminded me of Bion’s concept of containment (Bion, 1962) and the difficulty of holding such intense, distressing emotions. For many People of the Global Majority (PoGM), the riots were not just a fleeting event but a traumatic reminder of ongoing racial vulnerability.

Over the course of the riots, I held community drop-in sessions, so called ‘safe spaces’ where PoGM spoke of the anxiety and sense of loneliness they felt. One participant compared the experience to bereavement—a disorienting loss that seemed to turn their world upside down but left many alongside unaffected. Others described how their routines had been upended, the constant vigilance they now felt, the way even mundane activities like travelling to work had become fraught with danger. Particularly disconcerting was the notion that outside of the home, few people seemed aware of the anxiety they were carrying.  Things seemed normal in a world that felt anything but.  In the media the physical impact was acknowledged with burning and looting being condemned, but the emotional impact of fear and trepidation was not.  For many PoGM this encouraged a denial of their own feelings.  They had wondered whether the anxiety and concern they felt was them ‘being silly and making a mountain out of a molehill’, particularly when they lived in areas as yet unaffected by the unrest.

I wondered on the split between the disturbance participants felt inside and the calm exterior they described themselves as having to present as they fitted into the regularity of the society around them.  With lack of opportunity to connect on the topic and minimal attention to emotional impact in the media, participants had been left with little sense that the feelings and bodily sensations they were experiencing were common amongst many who felt marginalised as a result of their ethnicity or colour.  They described relief at hearing each other’s stories and learning that their feelings were normal in the circumstances and widely shared.  I pondered on the way that media images of hypermasculine Black males and the strong Black woman might make it difficult for society to recognise the distress that was being carried. Stereotypical images which might also make it difficult for PoGM to recognise and own their own feelings of vulnerability.   It was as if there was some kind complicit arrangement where society ignored or was oblivious to the longer-term emotional effect of these events on racialised individuals, and racialised individuals themselves dare not show evidence of having been affected.  I am of the mind that both of these positions contribute to a position of ‘stuckness’ and repeated cycles of disturbance which only get attention in the moment.

Reclaiming Narratives, Reclaiming Power

As I reflect on the fleeting nature of the riot’s immediate impact and the lingering aftershocks, I am drawn back to the theme of October 2024’s Black History Month: Reclaiming Narratives. This theme invites us to consider how trauma—whether individual or collective—can only be healed when it is voiced, processed, and integrated. Without this, it becomes part of the “unthought known,” lingering in the unconscious and giving rise to future difficulties (Bolas, 1987).

Psychoanalytic theory, particularly Bion’s work on containment and Fanon’s insights on colonialism, helps us understand the psychological toll of being on the receiving end of racial hatred within Western hegemony. I’m drawn to thinking about societies failure to provide adequate containment for PoGM’s emotional experiences, — resulting in a situation where raw, traumatic experiences cannot be adequately processed into thinkable thoughts. I like many others who are emotionally impacted by racism can find it difficult to give lengthy consideration to the situation, despite living with it impact on a day-to-day basis.  Fanon spoke of the way colonialism scars both the colonized and the colonizer, creating a world in which everyone is caught in a web of projection and introjection, unable to escape the cycle without a fundamental reworking of how we engage with difference (Fanon, 1967).

As psychotherapists, we have a responsibility not just to help individuals process their personal experiences but to engage with the broader social forces that shape those experiences. By containing the collective anxieties stirred up by these riots, we might create a space for genuine transformation—both within the consulting room and beyond.

Closing Thoughts: A Call to Action

The question of how to break this cycle remains critical. While it may be easier to forget the fear, the hatred, and the violence, this forgetting only ensures that the cycle will repeat. Society remains tied to firefighting with little space to give attention to critical issues until things boil over or until it’s too late.  Psychotherapy teaches us that what is repressed does not disappear; it returns, often in more destructive forms. The task for us, then, is to remember—consciously, actively—and to work with what we remember, so that we can build a future in which such ruptures are less likely to occur.

In a world filled with so much trouble, it is not enough to simply change the channel. We must stay present, even when it is difficult, and engage with the complex feelings that arise. Only by doing so can we hope to move from reactive cycles of chaos to proactive strategies for healing and change.

Sharon Frazer-Carroll is a psychodynamic therapist in private practice in North London and a regional academic in the school of psychology and counselling at the Open University. A Clinical Fellow of the International Neuropsychoanalytic Society, she is particularly interested in the neurological interface between conscious and unconscious processes.  Sharon is currently completing her PhD at the University of Exeter, building on her passion for social justice and three decades as an occupational psychologist she is investigating the racialised experience of psychoanalytically trained practitioners in the UK Psychotherapy Profession.   

References

• Bollas, C., (1987) The shadow of the object: psychoanalysis of the unthought known. London:  Free Association Books
• Bion, W. R. (1962). The psychoanalytic study of thinking. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 43, 306–310.
• Downs, W. (2024). House of Commons Library Policing Response to 2024 Summer Riots.
• Fanon. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth (17th ed.). Harmondsworth.
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