Trump delivers a steady stream of wins for his conservative Christian base
While he has made overtures to Jewish, Muslim and other religious groups, his Christian supporters have been among his most high-profile surrogates and appointees.
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Vancouver Sun
a few seconds ago
- Vancouver Sun
'Your suffering doesn't matter': Harvard psychologist tackles Jews' 'traumatic invalidation'
After the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Dr. Miri Bar-Halpern, a psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote on an Israeli Facebook group offering therapy resources to those affected by the attacks. She was flooded with requests from American Jews and Israeli-Americans. She, and seven colleagues, provided a year's worth of pro bono support in Massachusetts. In September, she will lead three talks in Toronto, on the theme of what many Jews have been experiencing since Oct. 7: a second layer of trauma — traumatic invalidation — that comes from their pain being dismissed, minimized, or invalidated. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. She co-published a study on the topic: 'Traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community after Oct. 7' in the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Typically, she says, studies like these receive some 2,000 reads; hers crossed 47,000 in the first two months. Some examples she received included: – Jewish therapists targeted in professional spaces; some yelled at for being Jewish, or mocked by their clients. – A patient who is related a hostage still held by Hamas spoke about the pain of seeing her loved ones' faces on posters being ripped and vandalized. 'It's as if my pain doesn't matter, they are erasing my grief and denying my daily reality.' – A psychoanalysts' sub-group of the American Psychological Association issued a statement condemning Israel as 'genocidal and imperialist,' expressing 'solidarity with the Palestinian struggle' and stating they were 'not in a position to determine which path to decolonization and liberation is 'legitimate'' – Many patients — Jewish and Israeli — described instances of others asking them to defend the actions of the Israeli government, as if they were personally responsible. – An Israeli-American woman described attempting to share her anguish with her colleagues and immediately being asked: 'How do you think the Palestinians are feeling?' Traumatic invalidation, Dr. Bar-Halpern says, can cause mental health issues in the short term and long term. Until June of this year, she was director of the intensive outpatient program at Boston Child Study Center for seven years, where she was the lead clinician. She also worked as a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. Last November, she began as director of trauma services and training at Parents for Peace, an organization combating radicalization, with affiliates in Canada and the U.S. Dr. Bar-Halpern spoke to Dave Gordon for National Post: Q: Describe the 'traumatic invalidation' you researched. I started hearing stories that were very similar to the stories I've been hearing in my clinic, in my work with trauma; those with a history of sexual assault, or attacks. That concept is traumatic invalidation. I realized that for Jewish people right now, there is a compound trauma effect, where a lot of us are still feeling the stress of the war, and worried about our loved ones at home, and carry the secondary trauma from October 7, from seeing those horrific pictures and all the horrors, but also the response that we're getting from the environment around us. The concept of traumatic invalidation is when someone is denying your pain, or focusing on the other side. Basically, controlling the narrative, ignoring you, not paying attention to your own thoughts, or telling you what to feel or how to act. I didn't invent the concept of traumatic invalidation. It's a known phenomenon in the trauma world, but no one ever applied it to the Jewish community, which is basically what I did in the research. Q: What examples of traumatic invalidation did you find out about? The big one, on the topic of 'ignoring,' is UN Women (a United Nations foundation), who took over 50 days before releasing a statement about the gender-based atrocities and the sexual violence that happened on October 7. There are a lot of examples of emotional neglect, when people told their friends they were suffering and afraid, and the friends didn't check in. And 'whataboutism,' or minimizing the emotional aspect of what's been going on. So the message that we're getting is that your suffering doesn't matter, or that you're actually unlovable. When people are blaming or putting down Jews and Israelis for parts of their identity. Almost everywhere today, they're being blamed for the actions of the government of Israel. So the message that we're getting is that your problems are your own fault; you are the one who's causing trouble. I think that if we keep seeing people as problems instead of a human being, then everybody's going to get more dehumanized. There is 'excluding,' which is another one of the traumatic invalidation criteria, when a lot of Jews and Israelis are being excluded from social events, from labs in the academia, or a boycott on Israeli researchers. Q: What was surprising during your research? The fact that antisemitism is so pervasive in the mental health field, social work, and psychology has been beyond surprising, and actually devastating to me. I feel really betrayed by the mental health field. Within the mental health field, a lot of people are supposed to be trauma experts, or expert in what we call Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which is where the term traumatic invalidation came from. They were not able to hold space for the pain of Jewish people. They made it about politics. So for example, I met people that shared stories about how they're feeling unsafe or traumatized, either by October 7 or by what happened after October 7 in the U.S. And responses from therapists was dismissal, or victim blaming, or literally, they were told, 'Well, what do you think is happening in Gaza? How can you compare yourself to them?' You can see it also in discussion groups for therapists. When my article was posted in the DBT listserv, the automatic reaction of some non-Jewish therapists was 'why are we bringing politics into this?' And the person who posted article said, 'this is not about politics. This is about the mental health.' The conversation quickly went into the dismissal of Jewish pain. I'm hearing Jewish patients don't feel safe. One example is what got me to write the article. One of the pro bono cases after October 7 said she didn't feel safe going to her LGBTQ group. The facilitator of the group started wearing a keffiyeh, and changed the art in the room to say 'from the river to the sea,' with drawings of a Palestinian flag. Their Instagram page called for patients to cancel their appointments and go protest with them. And when the participant told the facilitator that they did not feel safe, their reaction was 'deal with it.' I ended up calling the head of this practice to complain, and to tell them that it's not ethical, because when a patient tells you that you don't feel safe, the first thing you need to do is to make sure they feel safe. The other thing is that we had so much data, there were so many examples that by itself was surprising. We couldn't even include all of it in the research to show how pervasive the traumatic invalidation is. Q: Did you think what would occur if these experiences happened to another group? Yeah, I have to wonder whether, if you exchanged Jew for Black or LGBTQ-plus, whether we would have had the same response. You would not. One of my colleagues is a Black American Jew, and he said he actually experienced more way antisemitism than racism. And they'll say on college campuses, they don't want Zionists there. If they ever said 'we don't want LGBTQ here' that will never fly. But it seems like when it comes to Jews, if we just use a different term, like Zionist, which is modern antisemitism, then it's OK. We don't matter. Q: What do you want mental health professionals to do with your research? To understand the experience of Jews today; to widen the ability to validate their pain. Validation is not always an agreement, by the way. Validation is 'I see you, I understand you, I hear your pain.' You don't have to solve the problem. You just need to be there and be curious. Ask: 'What can I do to support you? What do you need right now?' Q; What can the layperson gain from your research? Exactly the same thing. I think that's why it went viral. Because it speaks to everyone. Because there are so many nuances that we were trying to put into words in the last two years, and were not able to. And every person that contacted me who read the article said 'I saw myself in those criteria.' So this is for the everyday person to want to really understand their pain and figure out what to do with it. (The events in Toronto aim to) actually help people in the community to learn how to self validate themselves, and how to counter those negative thoughts that might arise when the community is invalidating you, and how to cope with the different symptoms that come with it. Because when traumatic invalidation happens on a systematic level, we are more vulnerable to develop post traumatic stress, and anxiety and depression, and changing the way we think about the world, the way we think about ourselves, and it's constant insecurity. So my hope is to give people the tools of how to manage all of that. Q: How has this impacted students? They're more vulnerable to a lot of it. In my clinic, I have K-to-12 patients that are refusing to go to school, or they're hiding their Jewish identity. Some of them start self-harming. Some of them say they don't want to be Jewish anymore because it's not safe. The long term effect could be mental health issues, like anxiety, depression and so forth, and trust issues. If their school is not protecting them, then we can expect them to not trust authority figures or institutions. So the hope is that the schools will be trauma informed schools, and antisemitism informed. My hope is that it can move from intervention to prevention. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our newsletters here .
Canada News.Net
5 hours ago
- Canada News.Net
Three Thai soldiers injured by landmine amid tense Cambodia border ceasefire
Bangkok [Thailand], August 10 (ANI): Three Thai soldiers were injured by a landmine while patrolling the border with Cambodia, the Royal Thai Armed Forces said, days after the two countries agreed to a detailed ceasefire following last month's violent five-day conflict, Al Jazeera reported. One soldier lost a foot, while two others sustained injuries after stepping on a landmine in an area between Thailand's Sisaket and Cambodia's Preah Vihear provinces on Saturday morning, the military added. 'One soldier suffered a severe leg injury, another was wounded in the back and arm, and the third had extreme pressure damage to the ear,' Al Jazeera quoted the Royal Thai Armed Forces as saying. Cambodia's defence ministry said it 'has yet to receive clear confirmation from Cambodian frontline forces concerning the explosion,' adding that its army 'has been strictly respecting the spirit of the ceasefire,' Al Jazeera reported. Thailand stated the incident occurred within its territory in an area recently cleared of landmines and announced it would lodge a complaint against Cambodia for violating a treaty banning the use of landmines and infringing on Thai sovereignty, the Thai foreign ministry said in a statement, Al Jazeera added. Both Thailand and Cambodia are signatories to the Ottawa Convention against landmines, Al Jazeera noted. This marks the third incident in recent weeks where Thai soldiers were injured by mines while patrolling along the border. Two previous similar incidents contributed to the downgrading of diplomatic relations and triggered the five-day fighting from July 24-28, which was the worst border clash between the neighbours in over a decade, Al Jazeera reported. The clashes involved artillery fire, infantry battles, and jet fighter sorties, killing at least 43 people. The conflict ended with a ceasefire on July 28 after US President Donald Trump warned both sides that trade deals would be jeopardized if the fighting continued, Al Jazeera reported. A recent meeting of defence officials in Kuala Lumpur concluded on Thursday with an agreement to extend the ceasefire. Both sides also agreed to allow observers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to inspect disputed border areas to prevent further hostilities, Al Jazeera added. Bangkok has accused Cambodia of planting landmines on the Thai side of the disputed border that injured soldiers on July 16 and July 23. Phnom Penh denied placing new mines and claimed that the soldiers had veered off agreed routes and triggered old landmines left from decades of war, Al Jazeera reported. (ANI)
Toronto Star
6 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Russia and Ukraine hold fast to their demands ahead of a planned Putin-Trump summit
The threats, pressure and ultimatums have come and gone, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained Moscow's uncompromising demands in the war in Ukraine, raising fears he could use a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska to coerce Kyiv into accepting an unfavorable deal. The maximalist demands reflect Putin's determination to reach the goals he set when he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
