Mental Health Resources08.07.2025
As we all know it is important to understand the silent signals after such an ongoing trauma as October 7 and the rise in national and global fear. With the intensifying waves of hatred, violence, and uncertainty in Israel and around the world against Jews, many people have found themselves caught between two conflicting realities: one part of them continues to function, while another feels numb, panicked, shut down, or disconnected. If you’ve experienced this, you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. In the aftermath of a traumatic event, many of us try to “get back to normal.” We return to work, take care of others, stay busy, or even manage to smile again. From the outside, it may seem as though we’ve made it through. But our bodies often tell a different story. Trauma doesn’t disappear just because time passes. As Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk wrote in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma is not just something we remember — it’s something we carry. It lodges itself deep in the body, beyond words, beyond conscious awareness. It distorts how we breathe, sleep, relate, and even how we feel our own skin. When a traumatic experience is too overwhelming to process — especially when it involves violence, loss, terror; or the collapse of our family, personal and intimate structures of everything we believed in (our safety and confidence)— the psyche does what it must: it fragments. We may go numb. We may dissociate. We may become highly reactive, hypervigilant, or emotionally frozen. All of these are survival strategies. They are not signs of weakness. They are signs of how hard the body is working to protect us from something it cannot yet understand and incorporate. Eventually, the body starts to signal that the trauma remains unresolved anf ofthe speaks when the soul can ́t. Even when we think we’re coping well, unresolved trauma often shows up in physical and emotional symptoms that don’t seem to “make sense”: ● Trouble sleeping, or waking up with dread or panic ● Chronic fatigue or body tension that no amount of rest relieves ● A constant sense of threat, even in safe environments ● Difficulty concentrating, or feeling like your mind “goes blank” ● Emotional numbness, or unexpected outbursts of anger or grief ● Digestive issues, chest tightness, or breath that feels stuck ● Feeling disconnected from your own body or surroundings ● Sometimes, people report that they “don’t feel real” or that life feels like a fog. Others describe feeling emotionally flat, unable to cry or connect, even though they know something is wrong. These are not psychological flaws. They are the body’s language. They are its way of asking for help — not to be rushed back to “normal,” but to be held, listened to, and slowly re-integrated. Why talk-based support isn’t always enough
