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 

Communities Can Become Extended Families

Community means a lot more to family well being than a street address. Community is support, camaraderie, and education. This post, which is my monthly Home News Tribune column is a description of the Gush Etzion communities of Israel, located just south of Jerusalem.

On a recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to have coffee with Mr. Shaul Goldstein, who is the mayor of the Gush Etzion Region of Israel. Located just south of Jerusalem, the communities that make up the region are home to over 3700 families. They range from large cities such as Alon Shvut, to Mayor Goldstein’s home town, Neve Daniel, which started with 17 families and now has 400. Mayor Goldstein speaks glowingly of his neighborhood, which is where he was raised and together with his wife of 25 years, they are raising their 7 children here as well. I learned that, not only are these beautiful communities, but nurturing and sharing as though each community is a big family.

When our discussion turned to how communities support couples and families, Mayor Goldstein explained the concept of “chai kehilati” which means community life. “I will give you an example. In one of our towns Karmei Tzur, there are many Peruvian immigrants, but some of them are uncertain of their family roots. So they undergo a mini-conversion to Judaism which requires another Chupah (wedding canopy). Recently, a couple went through that process and the entire wedding ceremony and reception were sponsored by their community. The couple had absolutely no family in Israel and can you believe it? The community decided we are your family now.”

“In the neighboring town of Tekoa, they have a wonderful custom for honoring newlyweds. The town hosts an evening during the week of blessings (Sheva Brachot) that follows the wedding. In the middle of the town, there is a great lawn, and that’s where they make an enormous party. The entire town shows up to dance, sing and wish the new couple well in their life together.”

Mayor Goldstein described the communal gathering that takes place after Sabbath morning services; the Kiddush. “For happy occasions such as a circumcision, naming a baby girl, Bar or Bat Mitzvah, you cannot imagine the response of the community in hosting a Kiddush. One family prepares the fruit, another the cakes, another the fish, another the paper goods and it is truly remarkable when the whole town participates in the preparation and then celebrates together.”

He described the intriguing concept of the “Gemach” in each town. It is a Hebrew acronym for doing acts of kindness for others. “Families donate appliances, furniture, even money,” explained Goldstein, “and it is a free loan society which is available to all individuals and families in the town.”
He added, “People really do care about each other here. When you read the weekly Sabbath Newsletter that each community prints, you often see in the back section, this one family wants to thank this other family and you don’t know why, and you don’t ask. The story is private, but the expression of appreciation is public.”

There is also generous support for families when they experience the sad side of life-cycle events. When Mayor Goldstein lost his father several years ago, he spent the week of mourning (shiva) in a small southern Israeli town that had no religious community to speak of. “Requiring ten men to say the daily prayers, dozens of my neighbors came before work each morning to make the quorum and again late in the day for the afternoon and evening prayers.” He remembers how many neighbors drove over an hour in each direction on each day of Shiva so that he could say the Kaddish (memorial prayer). “That is what I call community support. I was so touched by their efforts on my behalf.”

There is much that we can learn from these communities about acts of kindness in our own neighborhoods and within our own extended families. To participate in the remarkable projects of the Gush Etzion Foundation please visit www.gush-etzion.org.il

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com

Reader Insists: Dr. Singer, Practice What You Preach! Now You Decide

Pediatric Nurse Cindy criticized me after reading my October column about the man I saw mowing his lawn with his infant in a snugly on his back. My question remains: Isn't there a big difference between taking action when a child appears to be in danger and the child's parent is right there? Here is my follow-up parenting column on child safety published on January 3, 2010 in the Home News Tribune:

If you see a child in a dangerous predicament, would you intervene? Assuming your answer is yes, what if the danger unfolds in the presence of the child's parent? That's a different story and I'd recommend using common sense. It burns me up to see a parent acting irresponsibly. In fact, a Connecticut mother was recently charged with a felony (risk of injury to a minor) after police discovered that her 3-year-old child wandered from their home alone and crossed a busy street.

Home News Tribune reader Cindy took umbrage with my October column that described an irresponsible father mowing his lawn with his infant in a snugly on his back. Didn't the father recognize this as a dangerous situation? Cindy insisted, "Most inexcusable is that you did see the danger Dr. Singer, but did nothing. As a marriage therapist, I am quite certain you could have communicated in an appropriate and effective way, the danger of the situation and the risk to this young child. Practice what you preach, Dr. Singer! Child safety is everyone's responsibility." You won't be surprised to learn that Cindy (an RN) worked in pediatric I.C.U. for 5 years, and now works at a children's rehabilitation hospital, where the primary diagnosis is traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.

Cindy wants to change me from being a passive observer of human behavior into an activist. But I wonder if child safety is really everyone's responsibility? Or is it only in the absence of the child's parent?

Here's my absence-of-a-parent story that took place last January in Jerusalem in the Old City. My wife, daughter and I sat down to a slice of hot pizza in an outdoor cafe on a chilly afternoon. I noticed a mother nearby with an infant in a stroller and a young Israeli boy (about 4 years old) with a huge knapsack on his back. A few minutes later, I glanced back and saw the boy, but the woman and infant had disappeared. Had the woman forgotten her toddler? The young boy shuffled away alone and I put down my pizza, grabbed my knapsack, and followed him.

My wife asked where I was going, and I responded that I think a mother just walked away and forgot to take her toddler. The little boy proceeded up dozens of steps, which overlooked the Cardo archeological excavation, and turned right onto a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. I was 20 feet behind the toddler, when my daughter came running after me and reprimanded, "Dad, you are going to get arrested for stalking that little boy! He obviously knows where he's going and if he turns around and sees a six-foot American man following him, he'll be scared to death."

Nearby, a middle-aged woman asked us if everything was OK, and I expressed my concern that this child wandered away from his mother, and is lost and walking the streets alone. She replied, "I live nearby, and he's not lost. Children in this neighborhood usually walk home from school by themselves. It's like the old days when people felt safe about their children being on the streets."

As a father, I could not sit and eat lunch while a little lost boy (in my mind) was wandering through the streets alone. I now understand that there are significant cultural differences when it comes to child safety, and the question of whether child safety is everyone's responsibility. Bottom line for me: in the absence of a parent, take action when a child appears to be in danger.

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his Web site, www.FamilyThinking.com
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Jerusalem Postscript

As I boarded the plane for the flight back to New Jersey, I bought my last copy of the Jerusalem Post. In it, was a full page article by Judy Siegel, titled "Consultants in the Baby Business". It's a fascinating desrciption of the Puah Institute for Fertility According to Halacha (Jewish Law), which was established in 1990 and run in Jerusalem by R. Menachem Burstein (www.puahonline.org).

Recap: We started our visit just as Israeli troops were returning from Gaza. The debate was raging on....was their mission accomplished or not? As we left, the war was old news an the debate was all about the coming Election in Israel.

My interview with Mayor Shaul Goldstein will take some time to write up and transcribe. It provided some terrific insight into community support for marriage, childbirth, and families of soldiers at war.

Jerusalem Installment #5: Divorce in Israel

Divorces have gone into the 5 digits for the first time in recorded Israeli history, with 10,225 Jewish couples divorcing in 2008 (Matthew Wagner, Jerusalem Post). What I find interesting is that the divorce statistics were not released from a demographic agency (in the U.S. it would be the Census Bureau) but rather from the Rabbinical Court Administration. Further, Wagner's article states, "The Rabbinical Courts are empowered by law to impose sanctions to coerce one of the sides, usually the husband, to give a get (the document of Jewish divorce). These sanctions include blocking exit from the country, freezing bank accounts, halting welfare payments, and suspending drivers licenses." There was no discusssion in the article re why the divorce rate increased.

On a different topic, I interviewed Mayor Shaul Goldstein of the Etzion Block of communities (just south of Jerusalem) re the role of communities in marriage and childbirth celebrations. As I waited for Mayor Goldstein in the lobby of the Shalom Hotel in Bayit Vegan, candidate Bibi Netanyahu appeared. When I quickly grabbed for my camera, let's say it didn't evoke many friendly faces amongst his security team.
Look for a future post on the Goldstein interview.

Jerusalem Installment #4: Legend and Heartbreak

Two stories about the war in Gaza are still spreading like wildfire here in Israel.

The first story is that 2 Israeli soldiers in Gaza were told by a woman as they were searching house to house that they should not enter a particular house and she told them to go in the opposite direction. They listened to her and saw the house that they had intended to infiltrate, explode in a massive fireball. "Who are you" they asked the woman who saved their lives. She responded, I am Mother Rachel and she walked away.


The second story is of the father of a young soldier killed by friendly fire. He televised a message to the Israeli tank unit that caused the mishap and the tank unit received the message, even as the family sat shiva (Jewish week of mourning).

Here is an excerpt from Matthew Wagner's article (Jerusalem Post Jan 11, 2009)titled, Family of IDF soldier Who Fell to Friendly Fire: 'Everything that happens Must be for the Better'
Rabbi Amos Netanel, whose son Capt. Yonatan Netanel was killed by friendly fire several weeks ago in Gaza, told the Israel Defense Force tank crew that fired the fatal shot he wasn't angry. "You did not kill Yoni," Netanel told them. "Yoni sanctified God's name at the exact time that it was decreed in the heavens. You were the sacred messengers who carried out God's will. Better that your pure hands kill him and not the defiled enemy hand. Evildoers could not have hurt him." At Rabbi Netanel's request, the IDF Chaplaincy helped him contact the tank crew, currently fighting in Gaza, before the Sabbath.

"The family very much wanted to communicate our message to the soldiers before the Shabbat," Netanel said. "It was something that we wanted to resolve."
Netanel told the tank crew that he and his family were conscious of the fact that casualties caused by friendly fire were part of every war. "Under this working assumption Yoni went out to war, under this working assumption we sent him out to battle. We accept this as part of the struggle to overcome the enemy, and we love you and embrace you." We cannot control what happens in this world. We can only control how we react."

Jerusalem Installment #3: Israeli Marital Disagreements

When Ezra, our tour guide, asked the group: Do you know what the 2 biggest disagreements in Israeli marrages are? he quickly got my attention.

1. Hot versus Cold: The temperature of the home and the car are an ongoing source of conflict. I can certainly identify with this as my wife claims that I have a "broken thermostat". For most of our 31 years of marriage, I have been hot and she has been cold.

2. Chol Hamoed Tiyulim: "Chol Hamoed" days are the in-between days of the holidays of Passover (in the spring) and Sukkot (in the fall). Husbands and wives have this basic disagreement: whether to travel the beautiful land of Israel from top to bottom in day trips....or to just sit home and be couch potatoes.


Postscript on previous blog post re lack of rain: This is the worst January rainfall in recorded Israeli history according to today's Jerusalem Post.

Jerusalem Installment #2: Divorce and the Aguna

The daily newspaper is a good way to get the pulse of a people.
While most of todays's front page articles of the Jerusalem Post pertain to President Obama, peace in the middle east and the truce in Gaza, there was an interesting front page article relating to the "Aguna" (literally a chained woman). In this painful predicament, a husband refuses to give a "get" (hebrew word for divorce document) to his wife and thereby divorce her.
It is an intiguing story that spans the globe titled, "From Jerusalem to Jakarta"
I tried to get the link posted here, but did not suceed. It is an indication that urgent social concerns here in Israel rank up there with peace and politics.

Selfish note: The weather has been magnificent here. It's selfish because there is no commodity as valuable here in the middle east as water. It's the rainy season and Israel needs the water desparately.

Jerusalem Installment #1: Parents of Soldiers

If you want to know what the people of Israel are thinking, go straight to the source: the taxi drivers. At the exact moment when our new president began his speech, our taxi driver, while speeding through narrow Jerusalem streets, turned the volume way up. "Nasee" (hebrew for President) Barack Obama began his inaugural speech with simultaneous hebrew translation. Our driver, like other Israelis are not convinced, as many members of the US media seem to be, that this Gaza campaign was timed to end before Nasee Obama took the oath of office.

As far as the parents of Israeli soldiers in Gaza who I have spoken to thusfar, there is a split in opinions between:

1. Thank God they are coming home.
2. Mission not accomplished; they are pulling out of Gaza too soon

Stay tuned from gorgeous sunny (slightly chilly) Jerusalem.