Three years after October 7, Israelis have gone back to work, returned to school and universities, given birth, changed jobs, gotten married, and taken vacations. Between periods of war, much of the country appears to have returned to normal, or a new sort of normal, anyway.
For Sarah Yeger, 30, “normal” has meant raising two children through repeated rounds of her husband’s reserve duty.
During his first call-up in December 2023, she was alone with their newborn, without family in the country. Her husband was away for months. At home in Karmei Gat, the war was close enough to hear.
“We would hear booms and our house would shake,” Yeger told The Jerusalem Report. “Our doors couldn’t contain themselves from the booms.”
Navigating parenthood for the first time is difficult enough, and doing it largely alone, with her husband away at war and her family across the ocean in the United States, made those first months even harder.
Life, in this format, continued nonetheless. Her husband came home. She returned to work. They had another child. Then came another call-up, and another and another.
With each round, Yeger said, the family became better at adjusting, but each one also forced them to rethink what daily life would look like.
“Nothing is normal,” she said. “We have to create our new normal.”
Three years after October 7, Israel has continued functioning. But functioning is not necessarily the same as recovering. The question is what happens when people repeatedly move from emergency back into ordinary life, without ever knowing when the emergency is really over.
Cost of functioning
Research since October 7 has shown a sharp rise in probable post-traumatic stress symptoms among Israelis.
Dr. Sharon Slater, a clinical psychologist who works with trauma, described the first months after October 7 as almost a national acute stress reaction. People struggled to sleep, became hypervigilant, and were startled by ordinary sounds such as motorcycles or ambulance sirens.
Normally, she explained, after an acute stressor ends, the body and mind have a chance to reset.
“That’s not what happened in Israel,” Slater said.
Instead, Israelis have repeatedly moved between emergency and ordinary life.
“What often changes with people isn’t whether they can function but how much it costs them to function,” she told the Report. “The amount of energy it takes them to hold things together.”
For some, that can mean fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating, or simply having less emotional reserve. But they continue functioning.
“The majority is probably functioning through their distress to a greater or lesser degree,” Slater said. “But that doesn’t mean that the discomfort is not there.”
Yosef, 31, a Jerusalem resident and reservist, has noticed small changes in daily life. Certain sounds still catch him off guard.
“I know I’m okay,” he said, but he avoids sitting near windows and does not like being the first to enter a room – habits he developed without initially noticing.
Without an ‘after’
A 2026 study tracked 680 Israelis from before October 7 through more than two years of war.
A month after the attack, the number showing signs of probable PTSD had nearly doubled, from 16.1% to 29.8%. More than two years later, it had fallen to 19.7%. Only 4.3% of those surveyed had been directly exposed to the October 7 attack itself.
The figures are based on a PTSD screening questionnaire rather than a clinical diagnosis.
But in Israel, there has never been a clear point at which the threat ended.
“One of the ways that we treat trauma is we help a person understand that the trauma is over. We’re in the ‘after’ now, and the nervous system can relax,” Slater said. “What we’re experiencing here is that people are not fully resetting.”
Even during quieter periods, “it’s like you’re waiting for the next alert rather than actually resting,” Slater said.
Still, people have become more accustomed to switching between emergency and everyday life.
“The sirens, the reserve duty, the having to pay attention in class one day and be on the front the next, is something that you can become more familiar with,” Slater said. “People are becoming better at doing that, but I feel like they have less emotional reserve to do it.”
Yosef sees this in the way the country has returned to routine.
“People are used to going to work, and the sun is shining, and children are going to school,” he said. “But it’s still a war.”
Living short-term
Three years of uncertainty have also changed how some people think about the future. Slater described a tension between an “uncertainty mindset,” which makes people question why they should plan, and a “scarcity mindset,” which pushes them to act while they can.
Before October 7, Yosef said, he could plan much further ahead. Now he avoids planning more than a week or two in advance, whether for work, friends, or buying tickets.
“It may be that in another week, it won’t be relevant,” Yosef, who preferred not to give his full name due to some of the stigmas that still surround PTSD, said. “We’ve been in this loop for three years.”
For Yeger, that uncertainty has shaped her family’s plans. “Because his [her husband’s] life is not his own, our lives are not our own,” she said.
Even whether to have another child comes with the possibility of another round of reserve duty.
“It’s literally questioning your every life move and then comparing it to what has happened and what could happen,” Yeger said.
The body remembers
Recently, Yeger and her family were in Tennessee when a weather alert sounded on their phones – the same piercing sound they knew from emergency alerts in Israel. Her heart stopped, and instinctively she began running through what they needed: the children, diapers, wipes, food.
Then she remembered they were in America; they didn’t need to panic.
“It was just such an out-of-body experience,” she said. “Everything triggered in our head. Like, go, go, go. What needs to get done?”
Calling Israel a country with PTSD would be too simple.
Not everyone exposed to trauma develops the disorder, and people respond differently, depending on their experiences, support systems, and previous mental health (history).
Slater also cautioned that her own clinical experience does not necessarily reflect Israeli society as a whole.
People also don’t necessarily return to exactly who they were before a traumatic experience. Slater pointed to the possibility of post-traumatic growth, including stronger relationships, greater awareness of mental health, and a stronger sense of community.
At the same time, she expressed concern about the availability of mental health care as more Israelis seek help.
Resilience, she said, does not mean the absence of distress. People can continue working, raising families, and maintaining their routines while still carrying it.
For Yeger, the goal is simpler.
“We’re just in survival mode still,” she said. “The real goal of what we’ve been trying to achieve is: How do we get out of this survival mode and learn how to just live?”
Three years after October 7, Israel has shown it can keep going through war. But that day and everything that has followed remain part of people’s everyday lives – sometimes unnoticed until a sound, a siren, or another round of fighting brings them back.
“It’s true that we are indeed carrying around distress,” Slater said. “It’s also true that we’re functioning through the distress.”■