The ongoing terrorism in Israel and the pre-war anxiety prior to the second Gulf War in 2003, the earthquakes of Greece and their own historical wars have deeply affected these countries disrupting healthy functioning in children, adults, families and the general societal web.  Because trauma affects the body and the mind, trauma affects the individual, the family and the society.  Tension in one part of the system affects the whole system.

 

The focus of this presentation is the importance of:

 

To achieve these objectives the clinician needs to be aware and ask questions; and needs to be able to titrate these anxieties through preferred treatment modalities.  EMDR is the model used in this presentation. The use of EMDR in family systems enables members in different circles of traumatic experiencing to resolve their individual and familial traumatic experience similarly.  Clients, friends, and colleagues in both countries were specifically asked about their first night, January 16th, 1991, in Gulf War1, in relation to current media exposure.

 

The postulated concepts under review:

 

A pro-active intervention of asking these individuals about their reactions to the current media exposure was started.  This more active approach by the practitioner was motivated by the consideration that once anxiety is recognized, processing can resolve the anxiety on all levels.

 

The findings demonstrated that in this pilot empirical study: once the old embedded anxiety was processed, the client was able to move into the preparations for the second Gulf War better equipped to handle tension and anxiety. Some case material will be discussed.