'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. Article content

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. Article content

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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.

She co-published a study on the topic: “Traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community after Oct. 7”