Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman don’t use the term “gaslighting” in their paper on Jewish trauma after Oct. 7, but they might as well have.

The Boston-area trauma therapists, writing in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, give a different name to the pain many Jews have felt over the last harrowing 20 months: “traumatic invalidation.” It’s a common term in their field, describing when, for example, rape victims are told they have “misinterpreted” events or even brought them on themselves.

They apply the term to what Jews have reported in the months after the Hamas attacks: “Rather than being met with compassion and care,” they write, “many were instead met with a stunning mix of silence, blaming, excluding, and even outright denying the atrocities of Oct. 7 along with any emotional pain stemming from them.”

For the Jews in their study, “traumatic invalidation” took the form of colleagues who ignored or shunned them after Oct. 7, or suggested that Israel had it coming, or told them that they were “overreacting” to antisemitic comments.

They write of clients and colleagues excluded from clubs and professional associations, pelted with pro-Hamas messages from people they considered friends, and told that their grief over the deaths, kidnapping and sexual assault of Jews after Oct. 7 does not matter compared to the human toll in Gaza.

Individuals whose experiences are invalidated or downplayed can be at risk for a range of symptoms, including mood swings, anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress. Making it worse, they write, are therapists and counselors who either don’t appreciate their Jewish clients’ pain or who minimize their distress.

Posted last month by a journal for specialists — part of a forthcoming issue on antisemitism and social work — the paper by Bar-Halpern and Wolfman has been shared widely on social media.

”We’ve been getting a lot of messages and emails saying just, ‘Thank you for giving me the language,’” said Bar-Halpern in a joint interview with Wolfman this week. “We had one person saying that she was crying while reading it, because she finally felt validated after the last year and a half and things finally made sense to her.”

Bar-Halpern, 41, is a clinical psychologist, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and director of trauma training and services at Parents for Peace, a national helpline for U.S. families with children drawn to extremism of all kinds. She grew up in Israel and moved to the United States 17 years ago.

Wolfman, 45, is a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist who grew up in Connecticut. She is founder and director of Village Psychology in Belmont, Massachusetts.

In a Zoom call, they spoke of the hurt inflicted when others deny your pain, how therapists fail their Jewish patients, and the kinds of skills that build resilience.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start by telling me how you came to this topic.

Miri Bar-Halpern: On Oct. 7, 2023 I wrote a message on a Massachusetts Israeli group [chat] saying, “This is my cell phone number. If anybody needs support, give me a call,” and I’m........

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