When we were younger than we are now, my sister — a psychology masters intern at a psychiatric hospital — came home with a term I’ve never forgotten: FUBAR. It stood for F….d Up Beyond all Repair.

Apparently they used it for patients who were past help, who would never recover from whatever psychological or mental disorder they had.

My sister certainly did not have to work in a One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest environment (remember that 1975 movie with Louise Fletcher as the cold, heartless tyrant, Nurse Ratched, who meted out abuse with medication in the psychiatric ward she ran? And Jack Nicholson the “sane” prisoner who challenges her and pays the price?)

But she was in regular contact with what she called her sad nut-jobs and said they were a daily reminder that mental acuity was not guaranteed and that everyone ought to take as much care of their mental health as of their bodies.

Her words have rung in my ears in recent weeks as I have considered the current South African “situation” and come to realize how FUBAR we — all of us — are!

We, collectively, live in a state of constant fear and unspecified anxiety. It’s as though we’re suspended in time, waiting for a bad thing to happen. When, most days, nothing bad happens, we don’t breathe out and relax because to be caught off guard would be the worst thing we could do.

Yet, when something untoward happens, we always are caught off guard, and, even though in the back of our minds we’ve been expecting it, it’s a huge shock. Like death. And the horror that accompanies our being caught off guard, when we’ve been preparing for this horrible moment, is in part anger at ourselves for letting our guard down, even though we didn’t.  And so it goes, round and round and round. Men feel emasculated because they can’t protect their family; women feel vulnerable and unsafe and unable to protect their children; and children learn early that their parents are, ultimately, powerless.

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation began a 2009 paper on the Consequences of Violence and Trauma in South Africa with this: “Violent crime and trauma are currently normative within South African society. Many commentators have come to refer to South Africa as a “culture of violence” — a society which endorses and accepts violence as an acceptable and legitimate means to resolve problems and achieve goals.”

It’s an academic treatise, carefully researched with the variables presented in measured terms.

My recent exposure to the culture of violence has been more intimate and visceral. A dear friend was attacked, beaten, bitten and shot at by three armed men in her driveway. It’s not a story you haven’t heard before. She’s just added to the frightening crime statistics of Johannesburg.

But she fought back, and bit her attacker and refused to hand over the precious ring her father bought her. Nothing prepares you for having a gun held against your head. You do not know how you will respond — whether you will flee or fight or fold. My friend fought, and now she is having to deal with the foolishness of her choice as she imagines all the things that could have happened.

Four weeks later, she’s completed the course of antiretroviral drugs prescribed because of the blood-drawing bite and the bruises where she was kicked over and over again have faded — going from swollen angry purple swirls to yellow.

This weekend, for the first time in a month, she went back to the supermarket from which she was followed home.

My friend says her life is slowly starting to normalise, and only because she is in trauma counselling several times a week.

She’s chosen a technique called eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) which does not rely on talk therapy or medications, but on using the patients’ own rapid rhythmic eye movements — meant to reduce the power of the fear inducing memories of the recent traumatic event.

It’s a new form of psychotherapy, but one growing in popularity if Lancet and several reputable medical journals (like scientificamerica.com) are to be believed.

There are a host of a psychological treatments suggested in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, and no doubt they all have degrees of effectiveness.

But my concern is for those South Africans who have fallen victim to violence or crime and who do not have access to therapy in any form; who simply file away the trauma, the fear, the uncertainty until it flares up in some other form.

Yes, there are some free psychotherapy clinics available to the indigent, and free counselling services too. But, for the large majority (and especially those outside metropolitan areas), their trauma goes untreated.

It must be said, too, that the decision to forego counselling is not only an economic decision. A friend was attacked and robbed just outside his home in Johannesburg’s eastern suburbs. He was shattered by the onslaught, by how utterly helpless he was in the face of armed men. But, he refused all advice to go to counselling.

Today, that friend does not leave his house after dark. On the surface, it looks as though he’s forgotten the traumatic incident. But his cells have hung on to the trauma; residual fear from a decade ago remains and he has modified his behaviour to accommodate that fear.

Take that level of fear and multiply it by the millions of victims of crime in South Africa and what do you get? A nation of anxious, scared, angry, people.

I am much afraid of what this means for our national psyche.

We’re filled with rage. A friend says he can spot South Africans at international airports — they’re the loudest, and most aggressive.

A university friend who’s lived in Europe for 30 years came home last year and was shocked by our levels of aggression during the most mundane of interactions; waiting in supermarket check-out queues, driving, interacting with car guards.

Equally shocking for her was what she called “the over-familiarity” of South Africans, something she saw as rudeness. Her summation of us: that we are aggressive because we are over familiar with each other. If we were more polite, we would not feel free to talk to each other in the manner we do.

It’s a theory; she’s an analyst.

I am a great believer in therapy, having spent most of my adult life on a couch.

I’m not sure whether it was that early warning from my sister (the psychology masters student intern and her sad nut-jobs), but leading an examined life is — I think — important. Because, perhaps, when you are self-examined, you are more likely to ask for help when you need it.

And when something traumatic has upset your equilibrium, you need something to reset the default button. Therapy, I think, does that.

The one thing we want to avoid is a country where the majority of the citizens are FUBAR.