Dealing With a Sick Parent

Deep personal crisis

I came to Eliezer during a deep personal crisis. It was just before my father began dialysis treatment that demanded long hospitalizations. I had started a new job and it was as though everything around me was threatening – I felt helpless. I was anxious and scared of daily routines. I was even afraid to go out on dates.

My girlfriend, who had been treated by Eliezer, recommended that I try the technique.

At first I was skeptical and I had to let go of my resistance to treatment.

Eliezer was kind and thoughtful, and after very few treatments I felt how happiness and feelings of control and confidence had returned to my life. I started smiling and laughing again, and began to go and enjoy myself – all this dues to the one wonderful therapeutic tool that Eliezer uses – TAT.

I would like to warmly recommend Eliezer’s kind and courteous treatment, his sensitivity, and the effectivity of the technique. I am truly grateful to him that I was able to smile and be happy within such a short time, and wish him the best in his continuing journey in helping with the unique tool that he was blessed with.

Yours, Hagit

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Dealing With a Sick Parent

My father is a Holocaust survivor.  He was recently hospitalized for a minor medical procedure but his condition deteriorated rapidly.  I felt extremely responsible for him and my visits to his bedside became more and more frequent.  I live in Shilo and my father lives in Petach Tikva.  I would finish work and go to visit him.  At one point his condition became very grave and I felt that I could not return home after work.  I would sleep next to my father’s room in the intensive care department in the hospital so that I could be at close call.  As soon as he woke I would be at his side to ask him how he felt and what he needed.  After some time I began to feel that the situation was taking over my life.  I would leave my family for Shabbatot and spend them with my father in the hospital.  I would stay in a dilapidated apartment, go to a synagogue to pray, make Kiddush, then go to my father and back to the apartment to sleep.  I felt that no matter what, I had to be with him.  My life revolved around my father.
Even though I have two brothers and my father had a wife, the responsibility became wholly mine.  At one point I developed a fear of what would happen to him.  On the rare days that I was home I was unable to concentrate.  I would keep on thinking that my father needed me at that moment: I had to help him, to be with him.  Of course all of his affected my wife and my children.  When they tried to talk to me I was unwilling to listen.  My wife wanted to talk about work, one of the children wanted to discuss his joining an officers’ course, and another son needed to decide in which Hesder yeshiva to study, and I did not have the time or the strength to be with the family.

This situation continued for about three months.  The crisis came when I would arrive at work and feel that my colleagues were looking at me strangely yet I did not understand why.  I work as an advisor and educator.

At one point my wife said that the whole family should go with me for Shabbat, and there, in the apartment with the whole family preparing for Shabbat, I realized that I had overdone it.  The anxieties that began with my father’s illness and my concern for him had overtaken my life.  I could not sleep properly.  I would wake up drenched with sweat – What is happening to my father?  Why am I not with him?  All this affected me greatly.

My wife suggested that I meet with Eliezer.  I had no objection.  I thought that it would help me in my capacity as an advisor; that it would be another tool to help me in my work.

I met with Eliezer and after a few sessions I suddenly realized what had happened to me.  I realized the limits of my own strengths; what energies I possessed.  I did not cut off my ties with my father, G-d forbid.  I simply saw my abilities in a different light.  All of my intense emotions, my need to be with my father and to help him. it was as though my father had become my child.  Everything fell into place and in its correct proportion.

After the treatment my wife wrote to Eliezer and told him that her husband had returned.  We had become completely estranged from each other.  I had been with my father and my family had been left alone.

The treatments with Eliezer are very special.  Upon my arrival he interviewed me.  Since I am an advisor I delved into too many details and examined the case with too much complexity.  Eliezer looked for crossroads in my life with my father and only asked if tension between us had any time been elevated or declined.  I began to relax and memories buried in my subconscious began to surface.  It did not matter which events I remembered.  He did not ask me.  The treatment helped me understand that there is a lot of information in our sub-conscious than can arise in different contexts.  But these contexts have sub-sections and one has to reach those branches.  This is similar to the Questions and Answers Project where one writes a word, and all of those words connected to the subject come up on screen.  Here, one association leads to another and back to one subject.  The wonderful thing is that all of the memories remain within the system.  Nothing is erased, and feelings regarding that information become more rational.

The traumas connected to everything that occurred in the past dissipated after a few meetings with Eliezer.  One of the amazing things that occurred was when I told him about a dream about the Sharon Hospital in Petach Tikva.  On the roof of the hospital there is a sign composed of coloured lights. In my dreams the sign appeared gigantic, as though the hospital was about to swallow me –  to fall on me – and I would wake up trembling.  During the treatments with Eliezer, the sign became smaller and smaller, and I could now see the hospital from high above, as though it was a small dot on the surface.
Unfortunately, my father is still not completely well and his condition fluctuates.  I have gone back to work and to family life.  I still visit my father twice a week, but my life has returned to its normal proportions.