Story highlights Elaine Dang: I survived a terrorist attack and learned that educating ourselves is an antidote to fear

The best way to overcome fear is to befriend Muslims in our community and learn more about their faith, writes Dang

Elaine Dang is a graduate student at the Yale School of Management. Meaghan Shanahan worked with Dang in the writing of this piece. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author.

(CNN) I survived a terrorist attack -- the kind President Trump uses to perpetuate a fear of "The Other." I am not a national security expert, but I am someone who has come face-to-face with terrorism. I, likely more than many experts who often base their knowledge on theory and secondhand information, can understand how this fear can spiral into something ugly.

On September 21, 2013, the International Day of Peace, I was at a children's cooking competition in a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, when members of the extremist group al-Shabaab opened fire. By the end of their siege, 67 people were killed, though I was fortunate enough to survive the attack. In the following weeks, my physical wounds healed, but I developed PTSD.

Elaine Dang

Every time a door slammed, my heart raced and I ducked for cover, assuming it was a gunman. As I walked into any public place, I immediately surveyed my surroundings and planned an escape route. I constantly felt threatened in large groups of people, so I avoided crowds and public spaces. And, just like many Americans today, I began to feel anxious and suspicious of people who were visibly Muslim.

As someone who was raised in a variety of diverse communities, this shift in my thinking and response to others shocked me. My fear had narrowed my vision, and made me believe that good and evil were as easy to discern as black and white. Somehow I had begun to think that by knowing what a person looked like or how he worshiped I could classify him as either dangerous or safe. But I was wrong.

As my psychological wounds healed, I began to recognize when my response was emotional rather than rational. And then I learned to use those moments as a signal that I needed to pause and consciously think about the emotions I was experiencing, and how they affected the conclusions I drew about situations and about people.

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