Broken Open~Treating Trauma for a Traumatized Nation

REQUEST FOR MONEY FOR THE CARE AND TREATMENT OF PTSD FOR SOLDIERS, VICTIMS, FAMILIES, AND INVISIBLES

I am: Susan Belitsky, MEd, MSW, CAGS, Licensed Israeli Tour Guide

Clinical Social Worker, Recreational Therapist, and Expressive Arts Therapist trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), and EMDR.

The campaign is to raise money for a therapy fund and organizational costs for my business The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy. https://www.thehollowpath.com/ and some help for me~ as I am among the invisibles as a person living in the north and displaced by the war but in the category of displaced by "choice".

More than a few words to honor the complexity.: Read as you wish:

Need for immediate financial support so I can continue to provide free or reduced treatment of trauma and the prevention and reduction of PTSD for soldiers, family members, victims, and the many others affected and perhaps invisible.  This war has utterly disrupted my life, living space, work and workspace. Always a gymnast I know how to land... and throw myself into the air, twist. land. Fall. Get up. Land it again and master the obstacle course. Good thing. I have landed in a fortuitous place, but I love my work and I have adapted it completely to this national crisis.

I have been working mostly for free for the past year because the need for therapists is so severe and we know the immediate danger of all this for the development of PTSD for the entire nation.  Immediate care is critical and it is known that the sooner is better. I am a dedicated Social Worker and I am asking for financial support for the care of the soldiers and the suffering others who are invisible to the common response.

1> Direct Care for the treatment of trauma for soldiers and others affected by war. This covers my fees to continue volunteering for Therapy Days for soldiers, and individual and group treatment sessions. There are battalions every day, all over the country receiving care from volunteer therapists.. 

2.> Recreational, Adventure-Based and Touring Therapy to rebuild lives including Building Awareness through Therapeutic Travel Walks.

3.> Psychoeducation about treatment effectiveness & neuroscience        of trauma. 

4> Building a Community of clinical support and learning with integrative trauma-informed therapists.  Caring for the caretakers. 

As a therapist and tour guide, I am beginning a campaign of tiyulim and typulim/ travels and treatments for the healing and transformation of trauma and identity.

Treating Trauma ~ Jewish Identity ~ Animal-Human Bond ~ Meeting the Other. This is my work and I am asking for funding as an independent clinical practitioner for my part in the unraveling of trauma here so it will not stay in the collective body as post-trauma PTSD for as many people as possible.  I have been working relentlessly for a year treating trauma in any and every creative and somatic way I can, mostly volunteering in the face of unprecedented war and heartache ~ and now garnered enough courage to request financial support/start-up funding/business investment so I can continue to provide free and effective treatment for soldiers and others with individual, vicarious, collective or complex trauma.

In this catastrophic situation, I believe we each must do our part; the role that only I can fulfill.  I know what my work is here, please help me to do it and to support the vast majority that cannot afford the treatment they so painfully need to cope with the unrelenting stress and loss currently gripping us. 

We are holding so much complexity here. Please help me make one thing simpler.

I am working with a group called Metaplim https://hametaplim.org/therapy-events/.  We are a group of around 2000 therapists and bodyworkers from all fields of study volunteering for Integrative Therapy days for soldiers with Integrative, Somatic and Trauma-Informed care and individual sessions. We provide unitive care and treatment for mind, body soul, and soma. I am trained in the most effective research-based techniques for treating and preventing PTSD; We are developing a model for integrating EMDR and somatic work with the bodyworkers' treatments as we all work together in these remarkable therapy days. I am involved in the model development and training.

I now have the most remarkable community of colleagues from all over the country and a present network of work, partners, referrals, and peer support.  The groundwork is all solid. The need is overwhelming. The funding is missing. Sometimes you just need money. Volunteering all over the country through this group, I have learned much this year about the effectiveness and demand for my skills. I found the dynamic integrative model that so profoundly matches my professional credentials.  My private practice is small and established and my business plan is clear. My business of treatments and travel was growing until the war derailed everything.  Now, after 15 years of seeding and reorienting my whole life in response to this war, my path for engaging, whole being therapy in the context of heritage and place is clear.

I am truly a Social Worker at heart and my stance has always been that we must care for the soul, live in our bodies, connect this body to the earth, and from this hopefully grounded place~ meet the other with an authenticity of kindness we each deserve. My work works on each of these levels: trauma, identity, animals, and meeting the other. 

You can read about my work and follow my journey on my website 

https://www.thehollowpath.com/

As a Therapist and Tour Guide I will do a series of walks and tours to raise awareness of the nature and possibilities around trauma and the profound resources we have in this land for personally compelling multi-narrative recovery and healing. The neuroscience will meet the trails and the money will go to a multilayered approach.  I will be documenting and writing about my journey along trails and I hope you will sponsor me for these walks.  

#1 Soul of the Foot Walk for Awareness: a journey from the lowest place ... on earth.  The only way is up. A 10-day journey of sites that offer the opportunity to explore depressions, tells, burial, ritual, and layers.

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Broken Open: Our Status and My Status

We are all battle-weary and scared and doing the best we can to carry on life and hold onto our sanity in the unbalance of war and moral dissonance.  I have always believed the balance and health of this country depend on addressing the multilayered complicated cocktail of complex trauma, intergenerational trauma, vicarious trauma, and collective trauma that lives in the body of everyone here affecting every single interaction.  Now we have an unprecedented opportunity to raise our nation's health level by bringing trauma-informed treatment to as many people as possible.  October 7 shattered so much and we have broken open; the strong and mighty characters here are open to therapy.  

These Unbelievable Treatment days where hundreds of therapists from all professional fields from bodywork to psychotherapy offer their care and expertise to soldiers and the many relatives and victims of this crazy war we are all subjected to whether we agree, disagree, or protest. These days are unbelievable... You see soldiers from all backgrounds, religious, hiloni/secular, Jewish, Bedouin, Druze getting massages, reflexology, osteopathy, or with me and many other psychotherapists... EMDR, EFT Tapping, Somatic Experiencing, and Trauma Release. These are my credentials along with Clinical Social Work, Recreational Therapy and Expressive Arts Therapy, and combined with my Israeli Tour Guide knowledge, I'm doing adaptive, intensive trauma education and somatic relief and reprocessing.  People can feel in their bodies that this stuff really works and know to keep looking for treatment when they are ready. Trauma is not a life sentence with the right care. 

Right now what fills the demand is free and accessible treatment as easy as possible.  I am asking for donations so I can continue to do these treatment days 2-3 days a week and offer personal sessions to those invisible and off the radar along with the heroes we know are reaching.  Sometimes you just need. money... and as easy as possible.  Life here is so intensely complicated. Anything simplified would be a gift from heaven. 

My full vision and business plan are included and elucidated on my website. https://www.thehollowpath.com/

This fundraiser is for direct treatment and also for the overhead of my work/living space.  Most of my work is volunteer- as for many of the therapists and healers now and I deeply wish to keep it that way~ for the immediacy of the current crisis.  It is very hard to take money right from people inflicted by a situation that seems insanely wheeling out of anyone's grasp.  I do need a salary, so I've turned to fundraising and finding financial backing for my therapeutic business. 

Life Untethered: My Status~thankfully securely connected to nature.

Many of you know I was living in a Bedouin Village in the north on October 7 when all hell broke loose here.  My studio office space is also in the village as a base for therapeutic care and tourism.  Although the village was safe, I felt I needed to leave and be in a Jewish environment where I understood more of what was going on around me. Many Bedouin men serve in the army and they too were called up for duty as others; we were all nervous together.  But times were so uncertain then.  We had no idea what would happen and in the village, it was hard for me to stay informed.  I moved temporarily to the Jewish moshav on the other side of my beautiful oak forest. It was a temporary solution, followed by another temporary solution there, and then another move to the. center of the country; also temporary until I find a new place to live and work.  My work in therapeutic adventure and tour guiding completely crashed to a halt.  My home, office, and work were all uprooted in the upheaval of these traumatic months in the collective experience here.

Ironically I have found much stability and professional support in these volunteering days. I have become very much involved in creating community, supporting the therapists, training and organization development.

The sooner I have the financial. means and find a place to live and build my therapeutic retreat center the more available I can be for the much-needed therapeutic work. In the meantime doing these therapy days for soldiers, along with a follow-up caseload, has allowed me a beautiful framework for contributing my personal expertise in anadaptive integrative approach to therapy while being a part of an incredibly skillful and supportive therapeutic community.  I want to be working at full capacity right now and offer my services for free or reduced cost. Please help me with the funding necessary to move and relocate, settle and work. 

The rent in my office studio space doubled since the beginning of the war as the owner needs the space for his own means of financial recovery from this war.  I have to move my office as well and find a new place. It is my opportunity to build my vision of a home and retreat place for travels and treatments, tiyulim and tipulilm. 

So.... please contribute as your heart moves you and feel free to say what you want the money to serve. 

>To support soldier therapy days.

>Individual therapy sessions for soldiers and victims.

>Individual therapy sessions for anyone.

>Recreational therapy activities. 

>Relocation of my work and living space. I am looking for a place where I can both live and build a retreat space for tiyulim & tipulim. 

> General organizational funds for marketing, networking, supervision, and business development.

> Adopt a dog: care and supplies for the animal-assisted psychotherapy part of my work. Healing each other.

More about my work on my evolving website https://www.thehollowpath.com/

And stay tuned for some serious tiyulim, tipulim, and writing...

From my heart to yours..... in the care of healing of our beings...

BE HEARTFUL,

Susan