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After the Hostages Return – Iris Gavrieli Rahabi on the Long Road to Healing

When the hostages came home, Israel exhaled – but only for a moment.
Because what comes after survival is its own kind of reckoning.

In this conversation, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Iris Gavrieli Rahabi reflects on the unseen work of healing after collective trauma.
A member of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and longtime teacher in Human Spirit — a psychoanalytic–Buddhist training program that bridges Western depth psychology and Eastern contemplative practice — Iris has dedicated her career to understanding the meeting point between psyche, suffering, and compassion.

She is also the co-founder of First Line Med, a volunteer network that has provided long-term, free therapy to survivors of the October 7 attacks, to bereaved families, and to those who returned from captivity.

We talk about what it means to accompany others through devastation – when the cameras are gone and the quiet grief begins.
How psychoanalysis and Buddhism meet in tenderness and truth-telling.
And how healing, both individual and collective, asks us to stay present to the unbearable – without turning away.

  • 0:20 Navigating Relief and Worry After Hostage Returns concerning the hostages, one of them told his mother. I thought to myself how smart he is. He said, Mommy, it's me. I'm the same person as if he knew that we can't imagine that he is the same person. Now we are projecting. 0:35 We're projecting of what's going on there, how I would handle this. But they're living there. They're living. They have the spirit. You are listening to their stories, so you see who was dealing with what and who got help by spirituality. 0:51 For example, even if they're starving and they're sitting, you know, in the dark, they're still human beings. And human beings have deep power, living power, to survive. 1:14 Speaker 2 Welcome to RAW, where we explore what it means to stay human in the heart of conflict. I'm a New Glory. Today I'm speaking with Iris Gavrieli Rahabi, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst whose work has been central to Israel's healing since October 7th. 1:34 She's a member of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, teaches in Tel Aviv University's Psychotherapy program, and is a longtime teacher in Human Spirit, a psychoanalytic Buddhist training program that weaves together Western depth psychology and Eastern contemplative practice. 1:53 Iris also Co founded First Line Med, a volunteer network offering long term free psychoanalysis to survivors of the October 7th attacks, to the families of the murdered and the hostages, and to those who have now returned from captivity. 2:11 Her work stands at the crossroads of psychoanalysis, trauma and compassion, bringing both precision and tenderness to some of the hardest human experiences imaginable. As we speak, all living hostages have now returned. 2:28 A ceasefire is in place, and yet the air is still thick with grief and a sense of confusion. Many of the dead are still in Gaza. Families are meeting their loved ones once again in bodies that breathe but also carry unspeakable memories. 2:50 This conversation is about what comes after when survival is no longer the headline and healing becomes the hardest work of all. Welcome. Thank you so much for for coming in. 3:05 Speaker 1 Thank you for inviting me. 3:07 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's such a such a pleasure to to see you here and to finally have someone come in. I can't say after it it has all ended because of course, you know, we're still in the aftermath of, of the war. 3:23 The ceasefire may hold, may not hold. The hostages have returned, but all not all the bodies have been returned. And yet there is something very different to the feeling the last two weeks than there was in the previous two years. And I wanted to ask you, after years of basically doing emergency work, how would you kind of describe the emotional atmosphere in Israel now and also among the survivors and the families and the people in your field? 3:54 Speaker 1 So it's really different from each group of population. What I can say that in common there is a relief. Something is relief. We can breathe again because it was like something was stuck in on your chest. 4:09 You know, you couldn't forget for one minute that there are people still kept alive in Gaza and you have to fight for it and you have to go out to the streets and you can't leave the families alone. And you need it for your health, for your recovery. So this is very common now. 4:27 I think as much as you get closer to the people who came back as a therapist or families, the picture is changing. So something did end, but it is really a beginning because now we start a journey and the journey is very, very, very complicated, hard, different from each person to each person. 4:52 It depends how you arrive to the captivity. What happened? What did you see on October 7th? How long have you been there? Were you starving? Were you tortured? So it's really, really different from each other. It's your personality. Of course we were talking between ourselves the day of the release and we wonder how come we are not in a an euphoria because the streets were euphoric. 5:18 Because you know what? What is waiting ahead? So you can't be euphoric actually. You're worried, you're worried how it's going to go, how it's going to work. And we're talking directly on the hostages, but especially on the families. There is kind of a fear that lean on past experience that after the battle is end, there is a kind of collapsing. 5:43 So I guess people who are taking care of the hostages directly, they can't, they can't fall apart. They have a mission, but what's going to happen afterwards? And the process is concerning. 6:00 The hostages. They're coming, they're frozen. First of all, I'm not sure how they're coming. They're coming on drugs, What they have been given by the terrorists, just that they will be able to walk. And you can see that after a day or two, their reactions are different. 6:17 Some of them don't want to see anyone, don't want to get in touch with anyone, and some of them are really cooperative. But there is a lot of experiences that are frozen deep inside and it will come out slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. 6:34 And you have to be there to be with them, to listen to it, to be very important in terms of how close you are getting to them, how are you holding them, how are you handling them. So it's really different, you know. So yes, everybody's breathing again, you can feel it in the air, but tremendous amount of worries. 6:59 Speaker 2 Yesterday I was on a Zoom chat with a meditation group and, and I kept falling asleep, which which rarely happens to me. And it has been happening in the last 10 days or so. And I was saying, you know, I'm so sorry. 7:15 I'm, I'm, I don't know what's happening. I'm tired all the time. And all these people who are not from Israel, they're from Australia and different places and they, they said I nuke it seems like your nervous system is maybe finally relaxing. And it's, it's so interesting, first of all, that I didn't see it myself. 7:33 You know, I, I work in this space. I'm interested in this space. And I didn't realize myself that this tiredness just started happening on basically on the day of the hostage return and the ceasefire. And so that's number one. And I think, you know, if I don't realize the kind of effect that these two years have probably had on my nervous system and I was very safe, A lot of people are probably in very similar states. 7:59 And it's going to take time for us to understand what this has done to our functioning on our daily functioning. The second thing is that I want to spend a little bit of time on the kind of you you mentioned the return of the hostages and that we don't know if they've been put on kind of, you know, drugs to to allow them to appear functioning and smiling. 8:26 So that's something that that's always been very striking to me when they come back is the the difference between what I imagine people who have been spending, you know, close to two years in underground tunnels with sleep deprivation and light deprivation and abuse, etcetera. 8:46 And then this kind of it's terrible, but kind of normal. Normal doesn't mean anything. But but people walking, Yeah. The people walking in, smiling, hugging their families, talking. I I I think I was even surprised to hear that these people could still speak. 9:04 What do you make of that? And you know, you, you've worked with some of these people. What does this mean? How are we? How should we look at that? 9:12 Speaker 1 I I think it has to do with us, not with them. First of all, concerning the returns, they are on a high adrenaline, whatever they were given, the adrenaline make you really awake, at least for a short while. But one of them told his mother. 9:28 I thought to myself how smart he is. He said, mummy, it's me. I think it was Matan Angus, I'm the same person as if he knew that. We can't imagine that he is the same person. Now we are projecting. We're projecting of what's going on there, how I would handle this, etcetera, etcetera. 9:47 But they're living there. They're living. They have the spirit. You are listening to their stories. So you see who was dealing with what and who was got help by spirituality, for example. We'll talk about it maybe later. 10:04 But even if they're starving and they're sitting, you know, in the dark, they are they're still human beings and we can't see it. We are imagining a hole in the ground and people who are not breathing, not eating and probably they're dying. 10:20 And from time to time they were listening short, you know, short interviews or whatever, which was directed. So one of them was laying on the on the ground screaming, looked at him and said, OK, he's dying, but he wasn't dying. 10:38 Maybe they told him and they were standing with a gun on over his head to to give this show. They weren't in a in a five stars hotel. OK, But there are people, human beings and human beings have a lot, a lot deep power, living power to survive. 10:57 And there were things that happened there that we didn't know between themselves, between them and the terrorist, the relations there. I think the worst cases are the people who were alone and they they were telling. 11:13 For example, I think Omar Venkat said that he was talking to himself out loud 2 hours a day and then moving. So if you have this solid capacities so you can, you can hold yourself and leave. 11:29 We from the outside are projecting the worst thing ever, and sometimes we can't imagine the worst things because we don't know what does it mean to get electric shocks, et cetera. But people are recovering from this and want to live. 11:45 Emergency Response and Government's Absence in Crisis So I want to go back a little bit to that period, even though, you know, I started by saying that we are in a different period now, but I feel like maybe it's the first time where we can look back and take stock a little bit of what happened. So October 7th happens. You're a psychoanalyst. 12:01 Psychoanalysis, from what I understand, is looking into our, our past and our the things we might have repressed, our subconscious, our dreams, et cetera. And here you are in the midst of an extremely traumatic event for, for the whole nation of Israel and for for all of us. 12:20 And basically you decide to to, you know, you're not picking up machine guns, but you are in a way stepping up to some kind of like emergency call. And from that moment you you've been working in this kind of like emergency situation. 12:37 You're raising funds, you're recruiting therapists, you're creating protocols as you go along. Tell us a little bit more about that time. First Line Med is an organization that you created shortly after October 7th, on October 7th or in the. 12:54 Speaker 1 Day, October 7th evening. 12:57 Speaker 2 Wow. 12:58 Speaker 1 I was contacting Alfred because she was taking care of wounded people mentally and physically because of the opposition to the revolution. 13:06 Speaker 2 Movement, yes. 13:08 Speaker 1 So I called her and then Merav went to Yamamella. We were talking Merav. Yes, Professor Merav, yes, psychoanalyst. We are all psychoanalysts from different institutes. We were started to organize ourselves, all the three of us. 13:24 And I think for about 2 1/2 months, three months, I have inflammations in my hands because we were all day long, like 20 hours a day on the phones getting help, messages and people who need some help. 13:41 And we're sharing it between the psychoanalyst from all the three institutes. We have a list of 450 psychoanalyst at the beginning. Now it's it enlarge a little bit because we we let some other psychotherapist to get in. 13:57 We are all specialists in psychoanalysis and what we did understand on the very moment that beyond the first line made before the first help you have to give to people that are traumatic, to help them not to become post trauma, you have to give the 1st intervention. 14:16 But then since we are analysts, we tend to think, and it seems that we are quite on the spot, that all these interventions which should be very, very, very long, OK, So we have bias. We are psychoanalysts. We think that every process should be very, very long and deep. 14:34 But this kind of trauma beyond the first minute, the first days, the first week, I don't know, weeks you have to go into it. We we mentioned before, for example, the frozen moment of the hostages, you know that they're they're becoming in a different to be to a different situation of themselves for this to release. 14:58 It takes a lot of time. So you have to be there when we are taking someone to help, we have an obligation of three years therapy at least for free. So because we believe that you need this length to let the process develop and deepening and to get a relief if you ask me if it should be even more yes, but practically we thought the three years it's it will be for at least for the first step enough. 15:29 Speaker 2 So you got hundreds of of analysts at 1st and like you said, therapists to basically commit to giving free therapy, free help to these people for for as much as three years and to be there alongside them. Where was the government in this end? 15:47 What role did you fulfill that you think maybe the government should have fulfilled? 15:51 Speaker 1 First of all, the situation with the government was already not harmonious. Let's, let's put it this way then what happened on the October 7th? There was no government, no army, nobody. There was a neglection of the people of the OTEF. 16:09 And I must say that the first thing was a spontaneous reaction. But when you hear where is the army, where is the army, where is the government? So you understand it, it's on your shoulders. So you're getting into it first of all, because you are tanned. 16:27 Your, your motivation is to help. That's how your mind is working. How can I help? And this is very Israeli by the way, not just psychologically or psychoanalytically or something. Everybody. People were going all through the country, sharing cascades or whatever. 16:44 Speaker 2 With loads and food and. 16:46 Speaker 1 Was nothing there, so you understand the government is not there. So we decided to give help to the people who were in the OTEF, not soldiers. 16:57 Speaker 2 That you mean the Gaza envelope? 16:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, the what we did see and we have to really share appreciation to the Social Security organization and to the Defence Office. They were giving help quite quickly. So the people who were really, you know, Pantella one it calls in in law, it's a brother and sister and parents and children. 17:21 So the. 17:21 Speaker 2 People who were directly affected shot, killed, raped Salsam and or and their direct family. 17:26 Speaker 1 The direct family but these are not the people, only the direct people that were hurt. First of all, it was a holiday. A lot of families were there which are not brother, sister, grandfather and grandchildren, cousins and all of all of these people didn't get help from the country. 17:46 They're not getting help up to this moment. So who's taking care of these families the the, the second round of the families and people that were there and nobody's taking care of them. Let's talk about girlfriends. If you were had luck and you were getting married the day before October 7th or you're getting help and if not your life has been ruined like everybody else's. 18:11 So we decided to take care of these people and that's what we are doing until all the people from the kibbutzim that they weren't killed or been taken into captive, but they were there, some luck left them, you know, leaving. 18:26 But so these people need help. So that's why we are taking care of these people. 18:32 The Human Mind's Resilience Under Extreme Captivity Just want to address that term trauma. We hear these terms all the time. PTSD, compound trauma, complex trauma, acute trauma. Can you just make a little bit of order for us? What does that mean? And, and, and the people who come back from captivity, How, how would you describe their trauma? 18:51 Speaker 1 First of all, what is trauma? Trauma is a rupture, is a rupture in continuity. It takes you into a situation that you can't digest and you can't vomit, so it's frozen in your mind. So you have to find ways to to go beyond this, but you can't compound trauma means that there is several routes to the trauma. 19:17 So being in captivity, it's one trauma, but coming back and see that your house is burned out and you don't have where to live, it's it's deepening the trauma or compounding it with some other routes. If you finding someone was killed like your husband for example, and you all alone, so this is compound and if you are being raped in captivity or before so this is compound. 19:44 It means that there are a lot of fruits to the trauma acute trauma. It's when it happens post trauma has its own signs of trauma that wasn't elaborated enough. So they are all it is all different. But I think what you hear the most is the compound is because nothing was happened just by itself. 20:02 This makes things very. 20:05 Speaker 2 Very complicated, challenging to to treat. And what about PTSD? How many of the people that you are treating go on to develop PTSDI? 20:18 Speaker 1 Can't tell you in percentage to be precise, but I think those who get help quite quickly, they have chances not to develop a PTSD, but a lot of people will because it doesn't end the length of the situation. 20:37 So you can't recover. You're not arriving to a point that you can start your recovery. For example, soldiers that were fighting for hundreds of days and they have to be man and they have to be soldiers and not talking about the feelings and they are afraid to talk about the feelings because they might not be able to go back to fight. 20:56 These are, let's say, bad influence on your recovery. 21:04 Speaker 2 From your work with released hostages and people who have experienced the worst, what have you learned that that captivity does to the human mind in terms of loss of control, of codependency with captors? 21:21 Are there things that you think, wow, you know, you maybe you read it in, in books before, but now you, you, you understand something different? 21:32 Speaker 1 There are some things that are common. I'll tell you what I I found out all the people that were those who were really like becoming friendly with the captured or or different relation. 21:48 They're all never forget for one minute that they are hostages. I'm taking care of a woman more or less my age. She was captured with her daughter and her grandchildren, and she didn't know what happened to her husband or her son-in-law. 22:10 They were all together and when she's telling me what happened again and again, she was organized in a way that you have to listen again and again to believe it. For example, how she would go to sleep. 22:26 It's hard to sleep there. People are guarding you with guns, etcetera. Kids crying, they're hungry. She was telling herself, her words of songs, hero songs, until she was falling asleep. Why? 22:42 Because she knew she must be on her legs tomorrow morning. She was doing gym. She developed conversation with the terrorists that were guarding them. She was very tense but so thoughtful and planned and understanding the situation. 23:03 For example, they were taken to be filmed for this one of these releases. And by the way, she heard that, that the people who are guarding them are from the Hamas. 23:19 So she told her daughter when she when she she was back, we're going to be released the 1st it's the Hamas. So women and kids will be released first. As how did you know? She knew she understands she'd be she, she's a smart woman. 23:34 She became smarter. For example, she was kept alone. All of a sudden they were taking her, putting her at the beginning in different room. She was sitting there and there was a beard, a Canary or something like this in a cage. And she looked at the canal. 23:51 She said, OK, if she if it is living here, that there are people here, somebody's coming to feed to feed it. So someone will come soon. So you become smarter. You can't imagine before how you're going to react. 24:08 So her story is different from other people's story. But you, you can listen here when, when they're talking in the media, for example, on a Vankat, he was looking to the cameras when he was captured so people can know where, where he is, that he is alive, that he was taken alive. 24:29 Who, who thinks about it? But it seems that when it happens, you're becoming a very, very intelligent, very aware you listening to the stories. One of the girls that said she's not my patient, but she was telling. 24:44 She said, OK, I'm sitting in a room now. I can be killed any moment because there were a lot of terrorists there. I'm just 20 years old. I have done nothing for anybody in my life. I can't just die like this. OK, so I'll help other people. 25:00 And she said from this moment on, I was just taking care of other people. I didn't care for my own fear and it it held her, you know, together. She didn't fall apart. Find someone to serve. When you're serving somebody else, you leave yourself. So she was taking care of all the situation, not forgetting even for one second that they are hostages and that something very bad can happen in the first mistake that will happen. 25:28 So the the stories are very different and you heard the Shahabi, for example, you hear people that were thinking and spiritual, they were going spiritual and it helps them. So I can't tell you one thing beside this awareness. 25:47 And we know the processes after coming back, what's going on, how how fast people are melting and how all things were buried, buried are coming out. It changed all the time because a person that was 50 days in captivity, it's not someone that was 740 days. 26:09 It's it is different. 26:16 From Euphoria to Confusion: Israel's Shifting Mood If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to RAW on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review and share it with someone who might find it meaningful. You can also explore more about the show and subscribe to mynewsletter@withanook.com. 26:39 I imagine that in that time the the experience of the medical professionals and and therapeutic staff and also changed with experience as hostages were returning. Would you say that the protocols for how to treat these people changed over time, and if So, what are some of the core elements of it? 27:03 Speaker 1 First of all, the answer is yes, it changed all the time. It changes all the time because we see different phenomena and there is no experience or written experience or researches that you can build the protocol, you can build protocols. 27:21 And that's what we did in the beginning, knowing what does it mean taking care of trauma. But after a while, after the the second day release, there were already 400 to 500 days. 27:37 We found different phenomena. For example, the frozen soul was different, the the weight of the people were different, the tortures were different. So I think the basic thing beyond taking care of trauma and protocols is I would use something that I, I can lean on is the empathic stance. 28:01 I mean, you're getting closer slowly, slowly and you're listening carefully. For example, what we were studying in the second release, the release was just should some of them stay together? The girls for example, they have to stay together, not to put them separately. 28:20 They need each other. The the melting of the experience should be somehow together. So they put them together. Then they found out that in the hospitals it should be very warm, more like home, not hospital, not cold. 28:38 So they arranged the rooms, although they are for for emergency as well. But really, you know with carpets who put the carpet in hospital. But they did put and this is on the physics, but it represents the understanding of the mental needs. 28:57 In the beginning, we were all imposing ourselves on on the people because of goodwill, of course. But we we found out that slowly, slowly, they don't need you that close. They don't understand that they need a psychological assistance. 29:14 Wait a minute, wait aside, be careful. So this is also something that changed a lot during the releases. Now the last group that came was taking care of totally different. 29:30 Speaker 2 I feel like you said in the beginning, there was absolute euphoria. There was that day where I took my kids to Hostage Square and we were happy and I felt like actually for the first time, I was really able to talk with my kids about what had happened. For the first time, we shared those conversations and I was, I felt free enough and relieved enough and less scared to tell them that there had been, you know, all this devastation. 29:57 They knew it, but it wasn't as. 29:59 Speaker 1 They saw the pictures. 30:00 Speaker 2 They saw the pictures, we talked about it a little bit, but it's almost as if they never fully dared to ask what is happening with those people. And I didn't volunteer the information without them asking. And now I could say, you know, all these people have returned. So it's a very interesting moment and euphoric. 30:18 And then I almost feel like now is the euphoria has dissipated and there's a little bit of a sense of confusion. Like you said, this all happened very quickly. This Trump plan just appeared out of out of thin air. 30:35 And I think for a lot of people, we don't know what we are supposed to feel. Is it over? Is it not over? Are we supposed to still be grieving? We know there are bodies there, but I think for a lot of people we can't even imagine what that means. Someone's body being somewhere else and then what happened in Gaza, our soul as a nation. 30:58 Do you feel that as well, that this moment is kind of like a moment of confusion? 31:05 Speaker 1 Confusion is so exact, but maybe even it's kind of small word to describe what's going on because first of all, the battle is not ended. I mean, the battle to get back the bodies. 31:21 Some people don't understand what what the big deal with the bodies. Some do understand very deeply why we need the bodies back. And Hamas, what they're doing. Are they playing with us and are they giving us a excuse to get inside again? The government wants to get inside again, but they don't. 31:38 They can't because Trump don't agree. And what's going on? You are, you are frightened. What the Turkish are coming now to Gaza, for example. They're dangerous for us. They're not. They're going to be a new Middle East. It's a dream. It's nonsense. 31:54 You don't know what to do. And they're going to be election. They're not going to be elections. So you are very confused. The hostages are back. OK, Thanks God. Oh, thanks, Trump. Or thanks whoever. OK, they're back now, what with the other families. 32:12 So you're tired. You don't feel like going again to the to the kick out there of OK, to the Husted square. Yeah, but you can't, you can't let yourself not going. You're not leaving them alone, for God's sake. 32:28 And your relations, your private relations with the pictures. Ah, this is this one is back. This one's body is back. So we have all these kind of relations. What, what they're going to do, they're going to leave that this one or this one would they find, they want to find. 32:47 So this is very, very hard thoughts and feelings. 32:54 The Power of Helping and Long-Term Trauma Healing And the, the reality, the Israeli reality for the last several years is not, it's not getting calm again, no quiet. And you don't know what's going to happen. Could we live here? 33:11 Should we go now back to Kaplan? Are we being blamed to fight our country? And you keep working. We in FLM, for example, are getting all the time calls for help, calls for help. And we keep working and we keep working. 33:27 So there is kind of release, but no quietness. You can become tired as you mentioned before, but you can't go to sleep. 33:35 Speaker 2 How do you take care of yourself? How do you make sure you don't crumble? Where does the strength come from? Do you have places that that kind of hold you or is that kind of like an innate strength? 33:49 Speaker 1 First of all, I think there is a kind of innate strength, as you mentioned, but I think it has to do with helping the other. Who's taking responsibility, who is not How to say obeying to reality that you can't agree to. 34:09 Being so central in helping gives you a lot of energy and power and you feel you're doing something very important. But helping the other is the solution for a lot of mental pains. 34:24 And I think this is the way to help the other. I can tell you a short story. Once we were going to meet the Dalai Lama, His Holiness in Pomaya. It's a center of preservation of the Mayana tradition in the West. 34:40 And when the Dalai Lama is coming, the millions of people are waiting for him, you know, on the side of the roads and near the center. And then the other day when he was coming, his guts wouldn't let the people to get close. And one woman got into the, you know, beyond, beyond the barrier. 35:01 Speaker 2 Yeah. 35:02 Speaker 1 And she was screaming because he was going away and she was screaming, but what shall I do with my life? What can I do with my life? He stopped all the Pamalia and he was turning around and he told her find someone to serve, find someone to serve. 35:18 And this was his answer. This is the Mayana answer is the Buddhist tradition of the Mayana. 35:26 Speaker 2 I think you said or one of your colleagues said that especially in your work with the people directly affected or the 1st so-called, the interpretation of what they are going through or went through is less important than the presence. 35:45 The presence is the most important factor in the therapy and the healing. Why? Why is that so important and how does it differ from the presence of family or society or community? 36:01 And what else is is really important in the healing process of these people? 36:07 Speaker 1 The practicing of the presence is very different between therapist and family and friends. It's not more important. You need the warm hearted of your family and friends, but the method how to get close, how to listen, what to say, how to ground people, how to help them get rid of their anxiety or fears or real fears, et cetera. 36:32 You're professional. You know how to listen. You know how to get close. 36:36 Speaker 2 Are there any of the hostages where you know, they might say, or or professionals around them might say you're you're amazing, you're doing great. Like they want to do it on their own. They don't need any help. Can can these can issues arise years later, decades later? 36:54 How does how does that work with people who who seem to be reintegrating and sometimes even seem seem stronger? 37:04 Speaker 1 First of all, there are people who didn't seek mental help and they're not getting any professional help of this kind. Of course things will come out. 37:19 They will come out hopefully, by the way, in a while. It might be a year after, month after or decade, I'm not sure, but it can happen. So yes, some people do not want and some people look to you very well, but you will be careful as a professional. 37:37 You will tell them you look great, you're doing beautifully, but it doesn't mean that you think that, OK, it's over. We are human beings. Things like this are not getting over by themselves. Sooner or later you'll have to take care of yourself. 37:53 So you might go to a monastery and to practice meditation and Buddhism, but and you may go to psychoanalysis It it is very different from each person to the other. But things should be elaborated. Even if you're doing great. 38:09 When I see someone coming out, like, I don't know, I'm worrying much, much, much more than people who you that you see that they are really in contact with their inner world. Yeah. 38:22 Speaker 2 For for the Nova survivors and those populations, I spoke with different people who tried alternative therapies as well. I mean, there's art therapy and there's psychedelic therapy with with people who went through captivity. Is there also that kind of like openness and willingness to try alternative treatments with them? 38:42 Or is it really going back to the basics, to psychoanalysis, to psychiatry? 38:47 Speaker 1 You start with basics, but then you listen. You see what might be more helpful if you need the acupuncture or you need meditation or you need whatever, any kind of alternative therapy. So first of all, you start for what is in common, you know, conversation therapy or psychotherapy. 39:07 But then you can adapt, of course, because what leads you is the, the subjectivity of the patient. Now the Nova patients, the Nova survivors, it's a different story. Also, it depends what happened to them. 39:23 It depends. What drug were they under, If they were under drug influence or whatever, it's a different story. And there is a lot of worries concerning the Nova survivors. 39:39 They were going through different experience, totally different experience. Not talking about if they were taking hostage or wounded or whatever and they saw people were murdered near them being raped. It is a different story that is really being taken care of by the general situation by but by by their subjectivity and what was the specific story of each one of them, What happened to him, what drug he was taking or or not, et cetera. 40:12 So the Nova is a little bit different and there is a lot of worry concerning them. 40:20 Government Responsibility and Collective Resilience in Israel When you look at Israeli society as a whole, not just the people who are directly affected, but our entire country, do you feel like this is a country that is in trauma, still in trauma? Are we managing to to have a kind of national resilience or do you kind of feel worried also for the future of the of, of the mental health of, of the people of this country? 40:42 Speaker 1 I'm I'm tremendously worried. I think this trauma is metastasizing and I think thousands of people were hurt. A lot of them are not getting well. And I think the health services, mental health services in Israel are in a very, very, very bad shape. 41:03 And there is in our organization of all the societies and organizations of mental health that are coming soon out in calling the attention to the situation of the the society in Israel. Having said that, Israelis have resilience. 41:20 Israelis are amazing. It is amazing how people are really helping each other and surviving and fighting. But in general, there is a big, big, big, deep worry concerning mental health services and the situation, the mental situation of the society in Israel. 41:39 Speaker 2 Do you think there are are either national or personal tools that people can use in order to increase their psychological mental resilience? 41:50 Speaker 1 First of all, I think country should take care of the people. I think as fast as it's going to happen that the government will wake up and give help to the people, I think it will get better. They need to give money, tools. 42:06 The organization should be working efficiently and professionally now. There is a lot of awareness to the trauma you see on TVA lot of places that are really inviting people to get help. This is very helpful as well. Of course, I have my own bias. 42:22 Go to therapy, talk about what happened to you, get help. People should know that it's common. Nobody really passed this last two years like nothing happened. It's common and we're all on in the same boat. Some people can help, so get some help. 42:40 But if you're asking me what is the most important is that the government will take responsibility of what happened and create a yeah, taking responsibility. It's so important. If you're coming, put aside the talma coming to your parents. 42:59 You're talking to them, letting them know what happened to you as a child. They didn't mean to do any evil, OK. And they do listen and they do take responsibility and and they confirmed your feelings. You are getting recovery. You know you This is the recovery. 43:17 Speaker 2 It's interesting how you how you make the parallel with parents. And I have three young kids, so I'm listening about the kind of podcasts and reading about the psychological development of kids. And of course, there's so many times that I fail. 43:35 I don't live up to the ideal of parenting that I would that I would like. What I really love is that there's so much talk these days and parenting circles, et cetera, of the importance of repair, which says that, you know, we all, we all fail. 43:53 We're all human, You know, we all come with our own wounds. I might have yelled. I might have reacted in a way I didn't want to. But there is always that kind of that that opportunity, that beautiful opportunity of repair of when your nervous system has regulated, you can go to your child and say, you know, I, I yell too much. 44:14 You know, I shouldn't have yelled that loud. I'm really sorry. I'll try to do better next time. You know that that kind of owning, owning your responsibility and that sometimes that might even strengthen the relationship more than if you'd never blown up and you'd never repaired, of course. 44:31 And it's interesting that in a way, I think what you're saying is Israelis who are looking to this government as the people who have failed, and we still waiting for them to say we failed. 44:48 We're sorry you know so many. 44:51 Speaker 1 And we will take care of you. 44:52 Speaker 2 Yes, and we'll do our best to take care of you. And that's something that keeps coming up again and again with the hostage families, you know, is that the ministers never visited them, seem to say that they were to blame for what had happened in Israel, said that, you know, the war is more important than their children, et cetera. 45:10 And that must also be a very deep secondary trauma above the the the primary trauma. 45:18 Speaker 1 It this is the trauma. People were neglected, neglected people were sitting in their safe room and waiting for the army, for God's sake, the Prime Minister came to visit near us two years after the disaster. 45:37 It's it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So I want to say this is the trauma. Where were the army, where were the army and where is Prime Minister and the minister? It's unbelievable that Steve Witkoff gave his telephone number to hostage's families and Netanyahu. 45:57 No. So this is the trauma. The thing happened together. There was a attack, terrible attack, unbelievable attack of the Hamas, and you were standing alone there with your hands, with your pajamas. 46:15 Speaker 2 What gives you hope or what has given you hope in these last couple years? Maybe you can share, you know, some, some experiences either with colleagues or with patients What, what has kind of been the moments of light. 46:31 Speaker 1 With the citizen, what happened in the October 8th in the Expo, the so many people went to volunteer to help each other, to go through the country to under fire, to help soldiers and people from the from the Gaza Strip there. 46:50 This gives me hope. The people in the streets that coming week after week, the people that were in Kaplan fighting for this country, this gives me a lot of hope. 47:02 Speaker 2 Something you you want to share with the audience, with people listening, Something to give them hope. 47:08 Speaker 1 It's not a suggestion, it's an inspiration not to lose hope. The society in Israel is amazing. We have very, very, very strong and loving people of this country. There are a lot of people out there that giving help, looking to give help in all different kinds of assistance that needed. 47:31 Just have to open your eyes to see, to tell somebody that you are in trouble, that you are in a bad mood, that you need some help. Someone will give you a hand. After every darkness there is a light and we, we, we should keep going until we'll have the the light and find someone to serve. 47:54 This is the best suggestion I have to give other people. 47:58 Speaker 2 The best therapy? 47:59 Speaker 1 The best therapy, the best in a mental situation. 48:04 Speaker 2 If there's one thing that you could say now to to all the the hostages who have returned or, or the families, what, what, what would it be? 48:16 Speaker 1 Don't stay alone, seek for help. You're not alone. We are here for you. We are here to help. 48:26 Speaker 2 Yeah. That that's really the core of our human condition is, is wanting love, to love and to be loved. Sure. All right, Elise, thank you so much.

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