One Hundred Days: Addressing Our Collective Trauma from this War Against Israel

No words can adequately express our collective sadness and revulsion over the events that occurred in Israel over the last three months. Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that destroy a sense of security, making an individual feel helpless and vulnerable in a dangerous world. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves a person feeling overwhelmed and alone can be traumatic, even if it does not involve physical harm. “It is not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic, but a subjective emotional experience of the event” (Dr. Dawn Apgar).

Initial reactions to psychological trauma can include confusion, sadness, anxiety, and blunted affect. Indicators of more severe responses include continuous distress without periods of relative calm, severe dissociation symptoms, and intense intrusive recollections that continue despite a return to safety (a.k.a. catastrophizing).

Immediate emotional reactions include numbness, anger, helplessness, and denial. Delayed emotional reactions include depression, vulnerability, and anxiety. Similarly, immediate physical reactions include nausea, sweating, shivering, and extreme fatigue. Delayed physical reactions include sleep disturbances and lower resistance to colds and infection.

Trauma can also affect one’s beliefs about the future in terms of loss of hope, limited expectations about life, and fear that life will end abruptly. There are also existential reactions to trauma such as despair about humanity (particularly if the event was intentional as was the October 7^th terrorist attack on the citizens of southern Israel). The trauma can also include an immediate disruption of life assumptions such as fairness, safety, goodness, predictability of life, and God’s protection from harm.

Perhaps the worst reaction is hopelessness which is a feeling that the situation will never improve. I recall asking the revered Rabbi Abraham Twerski MD z’l, if he worried about conveying a false sense of hope to trauma victims in his books and lectures and he responded, “I am much more apprehensive about conveying a false sense of despair.”

Seven Ways to Manage Your Feelings and Self-Care

 There is no right or wrong way to react. It is essential that you make space for self-care during this painful time. The triangle-of-health consists of proper nutrition, adequate exercise, and enriching sleep.

The first step is to recognize and accept your feelings as adequate responses to extreme and abnormal circumstances.

Seek support; look for someone who is able to provide a compassionate response.

Limit media consumption. While it is tempting to seek out any information and news, the repeated viewing of tragic and horrifying images is not only extremely harmful but it is slow to fade from memory.

Maintain a regular schedule and take time-out as needed.

Try to avoid getting to a point of feeling overly hungry, angry, lonely, or tired as at those points, you are more at risk for feeling overwhelmed.

Tikkun Olam! Do good things! Give Tzedakah, engage in prayer, and send vital supplies to the IDF or to displaced families. These powerful actions help alleviate trauma. “Remember, if you are having difficulty coping, it is not an indicator of your weakness, but rather a sign of your humanity” (Ohelfamily.org).

Seven Tips to Avoid Catastrophic Thinking

Catastrophizing is when a person fixates on the worst possible outcome and treats it as likely, even when it is not.

1.     Acknowledge that unpleasant things do happen

2.     Recognize irrational thoughts

3.     Say “STOP” to break the stream of thoughts and help change your thinking

4.     Think about a positive outcome rather than a negative one

5.     Offer positive affirmations on a daily basis

6.     Practice cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), recommended by mental health experts as being effective in this area.

7.     Practice excellent self-care plus stress relief techniques such as: meditation, mindfulness, and journaling (R. Nall, MSN).

  

Phrases That Help Trauma Survivors: Seven Suggestions

This last group of seven tips should assist you in preparing for how to speak with trauma survivors. Your relationship with a survivor can have a positive impact on their recovery, so it helps to know what to say and what not to say.

Instead of “You need to talk about it” try “I’m here to listen if you need to talk.”

Instead of “Things will get better” try “I see and hear that you’re in pain.”

Instead of “It’s time to move on” try “I’m here for you.”

Instead of “Let me help you” try “How can I help you?”

Instead of “This made you stronger,” try “This has impacted you considerably.”

Instead of asking “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” try “Thank you for trusting me”.

Instead of trying to be inspiring and profound, just say nothing. Sit with them in silence (Amanda Gregory, LCPC).

Let us stand united in our prayer for an end to the loss of life in Israel and the safe return of our soldiers and hostages.

Dr. Alan Singer has been a marriage therapist in New Jersey and New York since 1980 with an 80% success rate in saving marriages on the brink of divorce. He is an Adjunct Professor for the Touro University Graduate School of Social Work and is a Certified Discernment Counselor. He blogs at FamilyThinking.com and serves on the National Registry of Marriage-Friendly Therapists and the Beyond Affairs Network. He authored the book, “Creating Your Perfect Family Size” (Wiley). His mantra is: I will be the last person in the room to give up on your marriage!  dralansinger@gmail.com  (732) 572-2707 

Marital Survival Guide (by the letters) Second Installment

Following my first essay on AISH.com, I received several requests for a continuation of the alphabet. Below are the E, F, G, and H of the fifty day Marital Survival Guide. Your comments are greatly appreciated. 

E

Empathy:    It is normal to want to help your spouse soothe when they are upset. Telling them to “calm down” doesn’t work. It is simply another way of conveying that you feel they are overreacting. Dr. John Mordechai Gottman suggests that the goal is not to try to fix your spouse's feelings but to communicate that you understand and accept them. This is empathy.    

Ears:     There is a well-known question: Why did God give us two ears and one mouth? The answer: so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. Here is sound advice for productive conversations: be interested, not interesting.  

Easy:    Men, do you want to make regular deposits in the Care Bank? Ask your wife each morning what you can do to make her day easier.

Eliminate    the “D” word entirely from your discussions and disagreements. Why? It is like hitting the reset button and waiting for your computer to slowly reboot. With all couples on-the-brink who come to see me for counseling, I ask them to commit to two or three months of weekly therapy sessions - with the D word completely off the table. Otherwise, progress is nearly impossible.  

Enforce     a no-phone zone at family meals. Researchers found evidence that mobile phones have negative effects on closeness, connection, and conversation quality. (See G section below _ Google) Przybylski and Weinstein, May 6, 2013.   

Engage       the services of a qualified pro-marriage therapist earlier than the norm of two years that most couples wait before seeking professional help. Why pro-marriage? Because some therapists will proudly proclaim, "I'm not about saving marriages, I'm about helping people".  My slogan is the opposite:  “I'll be the last person in the room to give up on your marriage".  

 F

Failed Bids:    What do couples argue about most often? Nothing. It turns out that most arguments are not about topics; they are about failed bids to connect. That’s fancy wording for "nothing" says Gottman as illustrated in this example using the television remote control. The husband is changing channels on the remote as they’re watching television together on the couch. The wife says, “leave it on that channel.” The husband responds, “I will, but let me just see what else is on.” She counters “no----leave it on that channel.” He says, “Fine!” Finally she declares...”Well the way that you said "fine" hurt my feelings.” He effectively ends the discussion by retorting, “I don't even want to watch television with you now.” What was this couple arguing about? Nothing, or like stated above, failed bids to connect.

Family:    The greatest danger of having a child-centered family is that when the children leave home, often the marriage does too. Empty nesters know this well. Second is the danger that even if the couple stays together after the children leave home, they may feel diminished as a couple. One couple that I counsel told their adult children "We were a great mom-dad team but a lousy husband-wife team." The third danger is benign but still regrettable. Some couples work on fixing their marriage after the children leave home and make significant progress. This is positive but sad for two reasons: many years of unmet marital potential, and even more important is the lack of good marital role models for their children (Dr. Bill Doherty).   

Father:     The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother (Theodore Newburgh).   

Feeling:     You are not going to feel "in love" all the time. If you want to recapture that magic from when you were in love, be loving (Dr. Frank Pittman obm).   

Forgive:     You hear the phrase forgive and forget so often that the two become equated with one another, when in fact, they have nothing to do with each other. Just because you have forgiven someone and given up the desire to take revenge, does not mean that you have forgotten the event ever happened (Michelle W. Davis).  The weak can never forgive; forgiveness is the attribute of the strong (Mahatma Gandhi).  

Friendship:     This is a combination of affection, loyalty, love, respect, and trust (Oxford Dictionary). Friendship is an infinitely more stabilizing basis for marriage then romance. Get good at friendship before you even think about falling in love (Pittman).  

                                                                     G

Gaze:     Men and women tend to experience intimacy differently according to Anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher. Women experience intimacy from face-to-face contact; they use the "anchoring gaze". This comes from thousands of years of mothers holding their babies in front of their face. Women tend to draw closer, face each other, lock eyes, and proceed to reveal their hopes, worries, and details of their lives. Men are not going to look deeply into another's eyes because this is foreign to them. Men experience intimacy by working or gaming side-by-side. This male approach to intimacy probably also dates back thousands of years. Picture ancestral males gathering behind a bush, quietly staring across the prairies in hopes of killing a passing buffalo in order to provide food for several families. Fisher suggests that in order to build intimacy with a man, a woman should do things with him that are side-by-side so that he isn't threatened by her gaze.  

Grand:       Gestures like diamond rings and weekends in the Caribbean are not as effective as smaller daily gestures.  

Gradual     is the key to successful change. Drastic change like huge swings of a pendulum tend not to be enduring.   

Grammar:     Surprisingly, correcting your spouse's grammar in the middle of a disagreement, can be considered contempt which is the most harmful form of communication. Who’d have thunk it?

Grudge Bearing:      Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski heard this at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and it helped him to rid himself of resentment. “Harboring resentment is like allowing someone you don't like to live inside your head without pay rent....and I'm not that nice a guy.”  

Google "phubbing definition" and pay attention to what you find.  

H

Happiness:     The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they make the best of everything (Old Adage).  

Marriage     is not supposed to make you happy; it is supposed to make you married. And once you are safely and totally married, then you have a structure of security and support from which you are free to make yourself happy rather than wasting your adulthood looking for structure (Pittman).  

Holler:      I never met a woman yet who wants her husband to raise his voice to her. It is contemptuous because the husband feels and acts superior. It is putting oneself on a higher plane looking down from a position of authority, with an attitude of I am better/ smarter/ neater/ more punctual than you. Gottman asserts that contempt is the single best predictor of relationship dissolution. It is for this reason that I give every husband who I counsel permission to yell only these three words at his wife (when applicable) “Fire-Get-Out!”

Hope:  Think hopeful      Speak hopeful   Act hopeful

Rabbi Yissocher Frand explains that "despair" is indeed a grave sin. According to the legendary Chassidic master Rabbi Aharon Karliner, it is the most destructive of all sins, because when hope is lost, all is lost. 

Be hopeful that all your efforts at nurturing your marriage will bring you true and lasting Shalom Bayis.