Treating Trauma While Living Through It, Israeli Therapists Help October 7 Survivors

Exactly three years ago, about 6,000 Palestinians crossed the Gaza border into Israel and carried out a massacre unlike anything in Israel’s history. Terrorists attempted to kill and kidnap as many people as possible and instill fear in the Israeli public by livestreaming the event. For the Israeli military and intelligence agencies the immediate goal was pretty clear: to stop the massacre, destroy Hamas in Gaza and bring back the hostages. But another major issue that receives less attention is the collective trauma that the country went through and still struggles to deal with. A report last year from Israel’s State Comptroller’s Office found that more than 580,000 Israelis suffer from at least one severe symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from October 7 and the ensuing wars. An unfathomable amount of people in a nation of just 10 million. But for many psychologists and therapists it was clear already on October 7 that their help was needed more than ever. “I got a message on WhatsApp in one of the groups that psychologists were needed for survivors from the Nova Music Festival. And so during this morning we started to offer hotlines and. My first call was Saturday night. So we started immediately,” Ayellet Weider Cohen, a senior trauma therapist, told New York Sun. That became the start of SafeHeart — a major initiative to treat survivors from the music festival and their families. A nonprofit organization, made up of more than 400 trauma-specialist and psychedelic-informed therapists, has treated more than 1,000 patients with over 75,000 hours of treatment to this day. Mrs. Cohen explains that the mass trauma created on October 7 “totally changed” her work, after more than 30 years in the field. “We need much more flexibility. We left our clinics and our rules” she said. Trauma as an IdentitySafeHeart offers a variety of different treatments for their patients, such as mind-body therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), water treatment, surfing, dancing, yoga, wall climbing and retreats in places like Cyprus. The more active types of therapy creates a sense of “group experience”, Mrs. Cohen says, which is very important when treating collective trauma. SafeHeart is also focusing on specialized groups designed to improve communication between survivors and their family members. For many of the survivors their trauma has become part of their new identity.While they use it to heal and grow, some family members have a hard time with this. Mrs. Cohen recalls a situation where pairs of survivors were doing a group exercise where everyone introduced themselves. “One woman said she was here because she wanted her father to accept her as she was now. accept me as I am now. And the father replied: ‘But I want you to be as you were before.’ But they need to accept that sometimes it’s not possible to get that person back. And their new identity is not less than the old one,” she said. Another challenge is that the groups often bring together a variety of different people from different backgrounds and political views. “We have to take into account that you meet people with different voices, different states of mind and political perspectives,” she said. “It’s so difficult to treat patients in a war because some of them freeze for a whole day when they hear a rocket siren. The one person that they can speak to is their therapist but he or she is in the same situation, having to run for shelter with their children,” Mrs. Cohen added. SafeHeart is also very aware of the mental toll the work is taking on their therapists, many of whom have children who fought in the wars against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. “I can tell you that my sons are soldiers. On October 7 my son left the house to go to war, and I didn’t see him for months. He was in Gaza,” she said, describing how it influenced her life and how stressful it was to listen to the news about the war in which her son was fighting.Today, as the nation commemorates the victims of the October 7 massacre, it’s extremely important especially for survivors and relatives not to be alone, Mrs. Cohen said. “Every reaction has a place. It’s okay to feel disconnected or overwhelmed. But please don’t be alone. Create for yourself the place that you want to be and the people that you want to be with. Accept yourself with every emotion that you feel. If you can, express yourself. Write or listen to music that makes you feel good. Maybe go for awalk near the sea, run, or do yoga,” she said. Efrat Atun, CEO of SafeHeart the October 7 anniversary is making them “deeply concerned” as it takes many survivors and their families “straight back to that morning, and we are seeing a significant wave of emotional distress.”“There has been an increase in requests for psychiatric care, in warning signs and in the severity of the cases we are seeing. Young people who went out to dance and celebrate life are now living with nightmares, relentless anxiety and the feeling that, in some ways, that morning never really ended,” she added. Despite the immense challenges and amount of patients in treatment, Mrs. Cohen estimates that about 40 percent to 50 percent are in a “very meaningful process of recovery.”Another 25 percent, roughly, are in a process of progress and recession – meaning two steps forward and one step backwards – while about 20 percent are in a “very difficult situation.”Mrs. Atun said some survivors have made “extraordinary progress, which is deeply moving and gives us tremendous hope. But for many others, there is still a long road ahead, and without continuous treatment, the consequences can be unbearable. We are here for the long term, and we will continue supporting survivors for as long as it takes, until no one is left behind.”

Treating Trauma While Living Through It, Israeli Therapists Help October 7 Survivors

Treating Trauma While Living Through It, Israeli Therapists Help October 7 Survivors

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