Personal Experience in Professional Narratives:

The Role of Helpers Families in Their Work With

Terror Victims
MICHAL SHAMAI, PH.D.w

This article describes research on the narratives of social workers who help terror
victims, focusing on the relationship between the helpers families and their work.
Qualitative analysis of three training groups of social workers who are responsible for
helping in the event of terror attacks in different parts of Israel, and of three debriefing
groups for social workers after terror attacks, reveals that the helpers families play a
role in the narratives constructed by the helpers. Two main themes were identified. The
first centers on the interaction between work and the family, and shows that in the
situation of a terror attack, the conflict between the two disappears and the family often
serves as a support system for the helpers. The second theme refers to the family dimension alone, and focuses on the dichotomy between vitality and loss. The way that
family life events affect helpers professional intervention is described. The findings are
discussed in light of Conservation of Resources Theory, the fight-flight response to
threat, and the concept of the family as a source of safety and risk taking.
Fam Proc 44:203215, 2005

I was at a party with my husband, enjoying a glass of wine, when the cell phone rang and I
was told about the terror attack. I asked him to find out about the kids. I knew they were not
at the restaurant that was bombed, but I just had to be sure before I began my duty.

Living with the threat and the horror of terror attacks has been part of the daily
experience of Israelis in recent years. Being exposed to political violence has generally
been an idiosyncratic local phenomenon known only to the people living in the specific
areas where the war or terror is taking place, such as Ireland, Columbia, or Bosnia.
This all changed with the events of September 11, 2001, when living under political
violence and uncertainty became an existential reality for the majority of Western
society. This situation poses an outstanding challenge to those in the helping pro-

wSenior lecturer, School of Social Work, University of Haifa, Israel.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michal Shamai, School of Social
Work, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail: michals@research.haifa.ac.il
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fessions, who are suddenly faced with more cases of trauma, massive stress, loss, and
uncertainty. Furthermore, because the helping professionals are also exposed to the
political violence and uncertainty, their personal experiences may affect their professional performance.
The goal of this article is to explore the interrelationship between the families of
mental health helpers, social workers in particular, and the helpers professional work
with victims and their families. In addition, the study focuses on the meaning ascribed
by the helpers to their professional intervention and to their families. These relationships and meanings will be ascertained through the helping professionals narratives.
Social workers are among those helping professionals who are stationed at the front
line in cases of terror attacks in Israel. Their mandate is to provide crisis intervention
immediately after the attack, and in the long term. They assist families in determining
whether family members have been hurt or killed, they accompany families to the
morgue for identification purposes, and they help assess whether special arrangements are needed in case of injury or death of one or more family members. Social
workers provide brief intervention for the injured and their families during the period
of hospitalization, and long-term psychosocial intervention and therapy for victims
and their families. The various tasks are provided by social workers from different
agencies, including municipal social service departments, the rehabilitation section of
the National Insurance Institute, social services departments in hospitals, and mental
health services affiliated with hospitals or municipal authorities.
Because of the continuous threat of terror in Israel, most of the agencies have organized and developed operational procedures to be followed in the event of a terror
attack. In most of the agencies, the workers receive some training for intervention
with victims of nationalist terror. Attention is also given to the impact of this task on
the social workers; in many agencies, a debriefing process is routinely implemented
after intervention in terror attacks, in addition to ongoing supervision that focuses on
reinforcing the social workers resilience.
My interest in exploring how helpers families are constructed in their narratives
emerged from the observation that social workers frequently relate parts of their own
family narratives in different training programs and debriefing processes. This gave
rise to various questions: What are the content and meaning of the social workers
family narratives that are brought to the different professional sessions? How do the
social workers construct these narratives in the context of the overall professional
process? When are the narratives told? Why do the helpers bring their private lives
into the professional setting? Is this simply the regular tension typical of family-work
relationships involving countertransference issues, or does it represent a separate
construct?

THE FAMILY-WORK CONSTRUCT

The penetration of work into family life and the converse have been studied extensively over the last two decades (Frone, 2003; Hobson, Delunas, & Kesic, 2001;
Pleck, Staines, & Lang, 1980). According to Frone, the most widely cited definition of
the family-work conflict views it as a form of interrole conflict, in which the role
pressures from work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect.
In other words, participation in either the work or the family role is encumbered by
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participation in the other. This implies a bidirectional dimension to family-work

conflict: Work can interfere with family, and family can interfere with work. Failure to
achieve balance between excessive work and family demands can lead to serious
negative consequences, such as higher stress levels, increased absenteeism, and lower
productivity (Hobson et al.). Yet, work and family factors that facilitate development,
such as family support, are associated with more positive spillover between work and
family (Grzywacs & Marks, 2000).
Specific working conditionsFsuch as excessive hours at work, scheduling complexities, and a physically or psychologically demanding jobFhave been associated
with family-work conflict that in turn is related to diminished job satisfaction and
contentment with life in general (Pleck et al., 1980). The working conditions of social
workers in the situation of terror attacks fit this description; thus, social workers seem
to be fertile ground for the intrusion of family issues into the professional realm and
vice versa.

MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND THEIR FAMILIES

When mental health professionals fail to maintain balance between work, family,
and leisure, they are vulnerable to burnout. This vulnerability is based on exposure to
loss, pain, and horror, and on the need to confront the exposure of the workers own
family to similar threats (Piercy & Wetchler, 1987). In addition, the threat to their
own existence and that of their families may raise issues regarding safety, pain, and
unresolved conflicts, and strengths that lie in their present families or families of
origin (Grosch & Olsen, 1994; Timm & Blow, 1999). However, if mental health professionals are unaware of their own families difficulties, they are likely to suffer
negative consequences, such as superficial therapeutic relationships, ineffective interventions, burnout, and simply poor service to the people who seek their help
(McDaniel & Landau-Stanton, 1991; Timm & Blow). This article explores how social
workers, as one type of helping professionals, construct their own family narratives in
the process of helping victims of terror and their families, and how these narratives
serve as a source of strength and weakness in the helping process.

METHOD
Qualitative analysis was used to examine the multiple meanings of the helpers
family narratives that emerged during the course of training programs, supervision
meetings aimed at enhancing professional and personal resilience, and debriefing
meetings (Creswell, 1998). The qualitative method is based on the phenomenological
tradition of exploring reality from a holistic perspective to create a broad system
of meanings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Thus, all stories and comments concerned with
the social workers families were analyzed using the thematic method of analysis
(Creswell; Maxwell, 1996).
The sampling process followed two basic principles of qualitative methodology: It
was a purposive sample and chosen in a way that ensures maximum variation. The
sample focused on narratives and comments about the social workers families in the
context of discussing loss, anxiety, and pain caused by terror attacks, war, and threats
of terror. To ensure maximum variation, the data were gathered from verbatim
transcripts of meetings from three types of programs. For the first type, two groups
took part in training programs, followed by a supervision process that focused on the
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work done with families who were victims of terror, and on the social workers coping
processes. These two groups met once every 2 weeks for 4 hours. The program lasted
for 2 1/2 years for one group, and for 1 year for the other group (Shamai, 1998).
For the second type, two groups attended a training program aimed at increasing
social workers ability to cope with the threat of terror that arose from Israels
withdrawal from Lebanon. These two groups met once every 2 weeks for 5 hours. The
program included 10 sessions for one group and five sessions for the other (Shamai,
2003). For the third type, three debriefing meetings were held after two terror
attacks in Haifa. In these groups, the process was neither audiotaped nor transcribed
during the debriefing, but recorded in writing immediately after the debriefing by
the researcher, who also facilitated the debriefing meetings. The debriefing groups
met only once for 3 hours. Altogether, about 90 social workers took part in the different programs.
In the latter two groups, maximum variation was attained through having participants of both genders and a variety of ages and family statuses. The age of the participants varied between 25 and 63, and their professional experience ranged from 1 to
28 years. The majority of the participants were women (76). The participants varied in
their family status; most were married and had children, and some were grandparents. Some were unmarried, and others were married without children; very few were
single parents. Two were remarried widows who had lost their first husbands in war or
terror attacks, and one was a widower whose wife had died of cancer.
The analysis was based on the hermeneutic perspective. In this method, the researcher constructs categories from the data rather than using predefined variables.
Each comment or description regarding the social workers family was labeled according to its content. Based on these labels, the statements were organized into
categories, which were then reviewed for similarities and differences until they could
be combined into broader themes (Creswell, 1998; Maxwell, 1996).
It is important to note that such a qualitative analysis also includes interaction
between the perspectives of the researcher and the supervisor/trainer, who was the
same person in this study. Consequently, the researcher could not be seen as a separate, objective, and neutral entity, but someone who influenced and was influenced
by the different groups and the content that arose in the different types of meetings.
In addition, the motivation to explore the specific issue evolved from the researchers
special expertise in family therapy and family research, and from sharing the participants experiences of the threat of terror.
These perspectives of researcher and therapist, and the common context interacted
during the data analysis (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This required particular awareness
of the effect of personal values and prejudices on the analysis process in order to allow
the voice and meanings of the participants, rather than those of the researcher, to
construct the findings. However, this was only partially feasible. To increase the
credibility of the findings, they were shared with social workers who took part in
the different groups. Their comments added and broadened the understanding of the
studied phenomena.

FINDINGS
The analysis of the session recordings reveals two main narratives regarding
the participants perception of the role of their families. The first narrative centers on
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the interaction between work and the family, and the second narrative is related to the
family dimension only, reflecting the continuum between vitality and loss.

Between Work and Family

The conflict. It was Passover evening. As she called the children to the Seder table,
Ms. Maya,1 a social worker and family therapist in a local hospital, received a phone
call. There had just been a terrorist attack, the hospital had called an emergency, and
she was needed immediately. After giving her children some instructions, she left. On
her way to the hospital, her youngest son called. He described the chaos at home in an
angry and sad voice, adding, in no way could this be described as Seder.2 While
recalling this event, Ms. Maya cried, saying that she was caught in an unsolvable
situation. She felt terrible about leaving her children alone on one of the most important Jewish holidays, but had she stayed with them in such an emergency, she
would feel that she was failing her colleagues and her mission as a social worker.
Ms. Maya describes a family-work conflict that is common nowadays, one that is
experienced mostly by women (Grzywacs & Marks, 2000; Hobson et al., 2001; Pleck et
al., 1980). However, there are major differences between the common expression of
this conflict and the way it is experienced and resolved in situations of war and terror.
One difference lies in the existential threat of terror and war; thus, when social
workers help terror victims, their own families are also somehow present. Thoughts
such as I hope my family and friends are all right; this could happen to my own
family; or how is my family coping with the horrifying news? are constantly in the
background. The participants also reported that despite their strong commitment to
the role of helper, they were unable to focus solely on their duties as they did in fulfilling routine daily tasks. The backgroundFthe familyFbecomes a vivid, integral
part of the voices, fear, and sadness of the victims of the terror attacks and their
families.
This presence of their families is expressed in the social workers narratives during
the debriefings after terror attacks. Most begin with a description that includes the
workers own family:
That day, I had asked to leave work early, because my daughter asked me to go shopping with
her after school. I was ready to go home when we received word of a terror attack on a bus.
My daughter was already at home, so I was not worried about her, but I called her just to
make sure she was okay, and of course to postpone our plan.
Every terror attack is horrible and it takes me a while to get over it. However, in the last year,
many of the attacks have been on weekends and holidays, and I have had to leave the family
to go . . . the contrast between my home, family, and children and the death and injuries are
so difficult . . . and as the events recur, it becomes even more difficult.

Thus, the social workers are required to make a quick transition from the context of
a family gathering to meeting victims of terror attacks and their families. Such
transitions are not easy, and in most cases, they are not fully achieved. Vivid pictures
1

All names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Seder is the Jewish festive meal held on the first night of Passover. In Hebrew, the word seder
means organized and put in order.
2

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of their own families penetrate the workers minds and affect their experience in
working with the terror victims.
Nevertheless, the social workers do not perceive the presence of their families as
impairing their ability to help the victims. Rather, it is an integral part of their narratives on the professional help that they provide immediately after a terror attack.
Perhaps beginning the narrative with a description of their families responds to the
social workers need to emphasize that those closest to them were not hurt: As long
as I know that my family is okay, I can handle the most horrifying situations . . . I even
hold a superstitious belief that by helping terror victims I am protecting my family.
Another explanation may lie in the contradiction between the description of a
family, which is usually a source of safety, and the situation of death, injury, and loss
of family members. Opening their narratives with such a stark comparison may reflect
the horror that the helpers face when working with victims families.
Resolution of the conflict. Another common feature of the narratives is the way in
which the family-work conflict is resolved. Although in regular daily situations,
solutions vary (sometimes the family is given priority and sometimes the demands
of work prevail), in the case of terror attacks, all of the social workers put their
work first. This was even true when the social workers were offered an opportunity to
refrain from reporting for duty. In most cases, the social workers families supported
this decision.
My director knew that I was at a very special family gathering when she called me and told
me about the terror attack. She asked whether I preferred to stay at the event, since they
could probably manage without me, but I immediately said I am coming. . . my husband
offered to drive me home so I could change my clothes and have some coffee before stepping
into the madness of the situation. I knew that he very much to wanted stay at the party,
but he was the one to offer the help and did not even ask why I didnt accept my directors
suggestion.

It seems that there is an unspoken agreement among social workers and between
the social workers and their families that handling victims of a terror attack differs
from ordinary work, even though the social workers also face emergency situations
involving pain and violence in their daily routines. Yet, none of the participants cited a
reason for the different attitudes toward emergency and routine work. Perhaps it can
be understood in the context of the social workers reliance on national identity as
Israelis and Zionists as a source of strength (Shamai, 1998, 2003).
When there is a terror attack, all the social workers come without any complaints. It is not
like other situations nowadays, when you can feel the anger of the workers towards the
government welfare policies or the municipal authorities, which are very demanding but
unsupportive. It is as if all the anger is put aside, and we feel we are all at the same boat, as
we did in the past . . . the spirit of unity, as in the early years of statehood, is revived.

For many years, Israelis were characterized by a strong sense of commitment to

their country. The spirit of the Zionist movement strongly affected individual and
social spirit, beliefs, and behavior. In fact, social commitment superseded commitment
to personal and familial desires. Although this pioneer spirit, which is rooted in socialoriented meaning, has diminished over the years in favor of a more individual and
familial orientation (as reflected in the narratives of the social workers), situations of
existential threat due to being an Israeli or a Jew revive it. Thus, the social workers
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and their family members share a similar collective experience based on the Zionist
ideology and spirit that characterized Israel in the past.
War vs. terror attack. It is interesting that in a situation of ongoing war, unlike the
case of terror attacks, the family-work conflict is not always resolved in favor of
the family:3
When my children were young and we were bombed by the Syrians, I left them in the shelter
and went to work, as did the other women in the community . . . today, as a grandmother, I
see my grown children staying with their children in the shelter. . . . Maybe we were not so
clever to put our community duty above that to our children. . . . Sometimes I feel stupid for
being so committed to my job.
There is not any real reason for being at work during . . . my daughter even wrote to the
mayor that mothers should stay with their children in the shelter. She really needs me to
help her with her childrenFmy grandchildrenFand she is also worried about me.

It may seem that both situations reflect Israels struggle for a secure existence, a
source of social orientation and strong commitment to the country. However, the
narratives here reveal that although the social workers do report for work during
missile attacks (i.e., events of war), they do so without a sense of mission and without
family support. There are several possible reasons for this. First, in contrast to terror
attacks, where the intervention takes place after the event and the social workers and
their families are physically safe, in situations of war, social workers have to be on
duty during the attacks, so neither they nor their families are safe. In this situation,
the social workers worry about their family members, and indeed, their own safety.
Similarly, the family members fear for their loved ones on duty, and themselves. This
mutual concern prevents the social workers families from supporting them, thus
intensifying the family-work conflict. Thus, even if most of the social workers opt in
favor of their work, they are not totally certain of their choice and may even consider it
stupid.
Second, in contrast to terror attacks, in which the social workers roles are perceived as being meaningful to the victims, their families, and the community, it is
debatable as to whether social workers are really needed during rocket attacks, when
the entire population is in shelters. Furthermore, although in terror attacks, the role
of the social workers may be associated with pride and even some sense of heroism,
this is not the case in wartime.
Yet, the situations of war and terror do share a common theme: In both cases, the
social workers families represent a clear presence that interacts with the professional
role. This figure-ground interaction between the professional role and social workers
family influences the sense of commitment. In such interaction, the social workers
family comes very close to the professional role. Consequently, many experiences
related to the social workers families emerge in their narratives.
3

These examples were taken from training sessions for social workers living near the IsraelLebanon border, an area that has been subject to violence for a long period. For almost a decade, it
has suffered the threat of terrorist infiltration; subsequent Israeli occupation of a security zone in
southern Lebanon relieved this problem, but the area became subject to frequent rocket attacks.
Since Israels withdrawal from the security zone (May 2000), there have been very few rocket
attacks, but the threat of terrorism has increased.

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BetweenVitality and Loss

The family as a junction of pain and strength
Since my husband was murdered [in a terror attack], I never tell people that things will work
out. I know that things do not always work out, but I have learned from my own experience that
no matter what happens, we [referring to her family] will be able to cope with it. . . . It might
seem that I am a strong woman and that I was strong shortly after his death, but I was not. I only
behaved like a strong person, a strong woman, and strong mother. . . . You should not have
believed me when I said I didnt need help . . . and we should not believe Alma when she says that
she does not need our help . . . she might seem strong, but I think she needs our support and help.

These were the words of Ms. Mayrav, a social worker, in a supervision session when
the group discussed the murder of another social workers son by terrorists. They
illustrate two major issues that also emerge from other descriptions. First, family loss
and pain, as well as vitality, influence the social workers descriptions of their families.
Though loss and death may seem to be the opposite of vitality, in many of the descriptions, they actually coexist. Ms. Mayrav expressed the loss and pain of her family,
as well as its vitality, which gave them the strength to cope with the loss. Second, the
social workers private experiences connected with their own families emerge as a
meaningful background to the narratives of their professional experiences. Such a
narrative seems reasonable because the interventions after terror attacks expose social workers to families loss and pain, which raises their anxiety about being possible
victims of similar loss: When someone asks me how can I function in such horrible
situations, I always answer that I can work with victims, I can meet with familiesFnothing is too hard as long as I know that my family was not hurt.
The safety of the social workers family might be perceived as contradicting the
situation of loss, but it can also be understood as a way of constructing a more complete narrative, which includes both life and death. Social workers families are a
source for creating such narratives. They enable the helpers to contain the experience
of death, loss, and pain. For example, Ms. Yaara recalls,
I came home at 3 a.m. after being with Avinoam [a father whose son had been killed and wife
seriously wounded in a terror attack] about 11 hours. . . . I came home and could not sleep, I
had to feel my children, to physically touch them, I felt it in my body in my hands . . . as if I
had to feel that they were alive. So I did crazy things. I got into my oldest sons bed, and he
threw me out; so did my daughter and my youngest son. So I went to my bedFmy husband
had no choice but to accept me.

In her work with families of union victims who were killed in the September 11,
2001, terror attack, Boss (2002) reported on a similar experience of a therapist. She
described therapists need for a concrete sense of the safety of their own families, not
just abstract knowledge that they are safe. Although findings of qualitative research
cannot be generalized to other contexts, this cross-cultural similarity among helpers
in the United States and in Israel emphasizes the need of such professionals to construct their experience of working with families of terror victims in a way that incorporates the vitality of those close to them.
Family as a source of knowledge and strength. Another way that social workers
families participate in the narratives created during and after helping victims and
their families is by using their own family experiences with situations of loss as a
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guideline in their professional role. Some of the participants reported that painful experiences within their own families were revived when they worked with families after a
terror attack. For those whose families succeeded in coping with the painful experiences,
these memories were a resource that helped them work with their clients. The use of
effective coping with stressful life events as a source of resilience has been studied in
many situations of family stress (Lavee, McCubbin, & Olson, 1987). It is also demonstrated by the story of Mr. Benny, whose role after terror attacks is to be with families at
the morgue when they identify the body of one or more family members:
Whenever I am summoned to the morgue, I know that I have the strength to do the job. I lost
my wife after a severe illness and know what it means to experience uncertainty, even when
the endFdeathFis clear. When families come to the morgue, it is quite certainFand they
know itFthat the person has not just disappeared or been wounded, but has been killed.
Nevertheless, there is always some irrational hope. I am familiar with this feeling, and this
helps me stay with the families.

Yet, a painful family experience, even if successfully dealt with, may also prevent
some workers from filling certain roles, as described by Ms. Debora:
I am only able to work with families in the first week after the loss; later I pass the case on to
another worker. Since I know what long-term coping with loss means [her husband was
killed in the Yom Kippur War in October 1973], I know I wont be able to contain the pain of
the family. It is too painful for me and raises painful memories that I am trying to avoid.

The story presented by Mr. Yoash, who lost his brother in a war, demonstrates
another way that social workers painful family experiences may affect their professional narratives. One of his subordinates commented that now she understood why
he hesitated to allow other people in the department to become involved immediately
after terror attacks, and tended to do most of the difficult work by himself: He was
trying to protect them from the pain. Mr. Yoash responded quietly and sadly that he
had not been aware of it, but in fact it was true.
Thus, it seems that the histories of social workers own families play a significant
role in the narratives that they construct during and after intervention with terror
victims. Like all narratives, these are used in a way that enables people to give
meaning to their existence. In situations of constant existential danger, like that described here, it is possible that the participants own families constituted the major
resource for buffering, and for guiding their means of coping. For some of the social
workers (Mr. Benny, for example), it was a resource that supported their work; for
others (such as Ms. Debora and Mr. Yoash), it guided them in avoiding or taking on
certain aspects of intervention.
The social workers own families served as a resource even when they had not been
directly hurt by war or terror. For example, the family appeared in narratives constructed when helpers were asked to choose and describe a safe place that they
could escape to when overwhelmed by pain, anxiety, or depression in the course of
helping victims and families. Most of the participants called upon memories of their
families of origin for this purpose. These included messages conveyed by parents or
grandparents, and visual scenes from their family history.
My mother is a Holocaust survivor. She lost her parents and most of her family and was
brought to Israel with a group of orphans, to be raised in a kibbutz. . . . I did not feel her

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painful past; I only knew it from her stories. She was and is such a strong, optimistic person,
with a wonderful sense of humor. . . she made our home a place full of vitality and humor. . .this is my safe place.
I enjoy reading. Whenever I feel sad, depressed, or tense, I escape to reading . . . as if I crawl
into the book. I have been like this since childhood. I learned it from my father. Every Friday
night after Sabbath dinner, all my brothers and sisters would climb into my parents bed and
my father would tell us wonderful stories. . . . I just loved these times and I learned to love
stories. Today, as grown woman, I enjoy reading and I escape to it when I need time out from
the burden of life . . . due to my father, this became a safe place.

It was interesting that even when social workers defined a safe place in nature,
their descriptions referred to trips they had made with their families of origin or
present families.
I came home on Friday after being with them [a family who lost their son in terror attack]
since Wednesday, and I knew that I needed to take some time off over the weekend. . . . I
wanted to take my family for a walk in Mount Carmel. Everything is blooming now. It is just
beautiful. I have gone on walks there since I was young; it is a place where I can relax. I
needed to do this with the entire family, but my children did not want to come. They are
teenagers, they have their plans, why should they have to pay because of their mothers
profession? My husband also had plans and I was too tired to persuade him, so I stayed at
home and imagined the blooming.

In sum, the two themes that describe the social workers experiences during and
after intervening with terror victims are that thoughts regarding the safety of their
families, and memories from the past, penetrated and guided the helpers professional
interventions and vice versa. The professional demands affected the social workers
families in a way that drew some family members into helping the social workers
perform their tasks.
Overall, the boundaries that often exist between work and family become blurred in
situations of war and terror. In fact, this is often necessary for social workers to
perform their role. These two main themes might be conceived as two intersecting
continuaFone describing the family-work relationship, and the other describing the
family vitality on the one hand, and loss and pain on the other. As illustrated by Figure
1, in ordinary times, the family is usually located at one end of the first continuum,
with work at the other end. However, during emergencies due to terror, the family and
work become closer, and the conflict either disappears or becomes significantly less
intense. The same process occurs on the continuum of family vitality, and loss and
pain. Although in regular life, these experiences are perceived as opposing extremes,
in situations of terror, which require intervention with people who have lost their dear
ones, pain and loss are in close proximity to vitality. As shown in Figure 1, in contrast
to the relatively large space initially seen at the intersection of the two continua, the
reduction of distance between family and work, and between vitality and loss and pain
results in a space that represents a shelter in which the social worker operates, and in
which the social workers own families play significant roles in creating such a shelter.

DISCUSSION
The main question raised by the findings focuses on why the helpers families play
such a significant role in constructing the helpers narratives during and after the
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Family Vitality

Work

Family

Family Loss and Pain

FIGURE 1 The continua of family-work and family vitality-loss and pain

professional intervention in situations of war and terror. Understanding this issue

may shed some light on the question raised at the beginning of this article regarding
the specific character of the helpers narratives: Do these narratives represent the
regular tension typical of family-work relationships, involving some countertransference issues, or do they represent a separate construct?
The significant role of the helpers families, as it appears in the narratives, emphasizes the need to deal with the existential fear that is evoked in the specific situation in which the helping professionals and their clients share the same dangerous
uncertainty. In such situations, the immediate tendency of human beings is to protect
themselves. As described in the findings, the helpers families create a shelter that
serves as a safe haven from which the helpers can venture out to meet with the
horrible results of war and terror. One might ask why it is the family and not some
other individual or social construct that provides such a significant shelter. This
question might be answered by using the assumptions underlying the Conservation of
Resources Theory (CRT; Hobfoll, 1998).
Hobfoll (1998) claimed that stress evolves and is resolved in the interplay between
biological, social, and cultural aspects. The main social aspects, according to CRT, are
a persons significant social connectedness. Although these aspects are considered to
be socially rooted, Hobfoll claimed that they have a biological source that is strongly
related to human evolution. Based on the history of human evolution, the primary
motivation of human beings is to ensure survival and to protect resources that are
needed for their survival. Family and tribe, rather than individuals, are considered the
primary unit for protection because their existence ensures continued evolution.
Thus, the tendency to protect family members, in many cases before protecting oneself, is related to the basic tendency of human beings to maintain continuity through
their children. As such, the family is perceived as one of the most significant sociobiological resources (Hobfoll).
In line with this theory, it is the knowledge that their families have not been hurt in
a terror attack that gives helpers a sense that they are also protected, allowing them to
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focus on the difficult tasks of helping terror victims, including the families of those
injured and killed. This explanation leads us to the question of whether such a family
shelter is needed on a day-to-day basis, and how it appears in the regular family-work
relationship. Social support is considered a main factor in buffering stress, including
daily stress. In addition, family support is associated with more positive spillover
between work and family (Grzywacs & Marks, 2000). Thus, the specific part of the
narratives dealing with routine social support, which is provided within the family to
facilitate the mutual development of family members, may be related to the regular
narratives based on family-work relationships. However, the specific support provided
in situations of war and terror should be considered as more related to the basic existential needs of family members than to interfamily relations (Hobfoll, 1998). Furthermore, in a regular family-work relationship, ones family situation does not
necessarily affect ones attitude and mood when implementing tasks at work on a daily
basis. However, in situations of war and terror, the helpers family becomes part of the
intervention, either as a shelter or as a guide for it.
One should be cautious regarding the findings of this study because further investigation of the role of helpers families in their work is warranted. The present study
analyzes data from training programs and debriefing processes that were guided by one
person interested in the relationship between social work and the helpers families. This
is liable to influence the research findings. In addition, the data were gathered in Israel
and are context related. Data from other places in the world are still needed.
Despite the limitations of this study, it is possible to use the findings to make some
recommendations on the practical level. In light of the significant role of the helpers
families, should training and debriefing programs address this issue? The answer to
this question is not clear cut. On the one hand, the helpers need for their families, as
expressed in their narratives, suggests that this issue should be included in both
training and debriefing. On the other hand, it is evident that without such direction,
the helpers nevertheless find their own ways to incorporate their families into their
narratives. In fact, it might be argued that direct intervention on this issue may even
interfere with the natural way in which helpers use their families in constructing their
narratives.
It seems that, as in many cases related to therapy, it is impossible to give an unequivocal answer. However, if the issue regarding the helpers family is not raised by
the helpers in the natural course of training, supervision, or debriefing, it is important
to invite the participants to raise it, even in indirect ways. Through the use of specific
techniques, such as imagining a safe place or imagining the future, narratives often
emerge regarding the helpers family, including aspects of strength that can be used
by the helpers (Shamai, 2003). The role played by mental health helpers in situations
of war and terror requires a sense of safety that allows them to take the risk of dealing
with loss, pain, and existential fear. Every resource that can provide some sense of
security should be acknowledged in such situations, and it appears that the helpers
family is one of the most significant of these resources.

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