It can be deeply upsetting to bear witness to civil unrest. Beyond the physical disruption of protests, there is a profound emotional toll in watching empathy disappear from our lexicon. Dialogue rapidly collapses into binary extremism, name-calling, and fear-driven "us versus them" thinking. When society feels chaotic, our nervous systems naturally crave certainty — all too often, that need for safety drives us to locate a scapegoat to blame. As an American mental health co