A psychiatrist explains why our reactions to terrorist attacks have become routine

When I first read the heartbreaking news about Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, cartoons were the first thing on my mind.

Scanning Twitter from my seat on my morning train, it wasn’t more than two minutes before I found what I was looking for, in the form of this powerful image drawn by Le Monde cartoonist Jean "Plantu" Plantureux.

—PLANTU (@plantu) March 22, 2016

Given the way hundreds of thousands of people tweeted, Instagrammed, and re-blogged images like this Eiffel Tower peace sign following the terrorist attacks in Paris during November 2015, I had a feeling people would be sharing Plantu's image with a similar fervor. As a viral news reporter, I would need to report on the image. 

As I walked to work, I started brainstorming the list of stories, in addition to the cartoon, I knew my team and I would likely be covering throughout the day. We’d scan the internet for stories of unlikely heroes, hashtags used to help victims, and Facebook profile pictures and national monuments decorated with the yellow, black, and red of the Belgian flag.

And on Tuesday, my team — like many other reporters around the world — found exactly those things. 

Human reaction to tragedies like the deadly attacks in Brussels have become ritualistic; you can calculate, almost exactly, how people are going to react. It's a phenomenon known as habituation, Dr. Howard L. Forman, the Director of Addiction Psychiatry Consultation Service at Montefiore Medical Center, tells Tech Insider. 

"If you are presented with the same or or a similar stimulus over and over your reaction tends to become muted," Dr. Forman explained. "There’s only so much the psyche can take before you have to habituate or adjust."

Forman likened habituation to moving to a noisy New York City neighborhood. The first time you hear a loud noise in the street, you react with shock or fear. But by the second, third, or twentieth time, your reaction dilutes. A loud banging sound in the street becomes your new normal, something you know how to deal with. 

"What happened in Brussels is horrific, but it happened not that long after the terrible attacks in Paris in November," Dr. Forman said. "Before that, people around the world experienced the attacks in Paris with Charlie Hebdo, and before that, attacks in places like Madrid, London, and 9/11 in New York City."

That doesn't even include events like the recent attacks in Turkey, for which many American media companies have drawn criticism for their lack of coverage. Given this frequency, Forman says responses like changing your Facebook profile picture are becoming second nature because they give us a way to "maintain our sanity."

For him, these reactions aren't trite, or forms of slacktivism — they are necessary coping mechanisms. 

"At least for many people in the United States this week, parents still had to make sure kids had breakfast, that everyone got to school, that work got done. We still had to accomplish all these things," he said. "If we didn’t have these small ways of diffusing some of that discomfort, we would be paralyzed."

While I wish I could say that Tuesday was the last time I'll scan Twitter for hashtags and heroes following a terrorist attack, I know it likely isn't. So I asked Dr. Foreman if he thought we could, or even should, try and break these habits. 

"I don't know that there is a better reaction for many people than these symbolic ways of showing sorrow," Dr. Forman tells TI. "Even if there was a better reaction, you can’t force people to react, to feel a certain way. It has to happen naturally."

So for now, natural is looking to cartoons for answers.