“Despite this, life is beautiful,” are the words that haunted Guy. They were spoken by a friend at the Nova festival as the rockets began to fly overhead and people were ordered to disperse. They went separate ways. She was later kidnapped and murdered by Hamas on October 7.

Guy survived the next six hours. He and his friends were surrounded by Hamas terrorists who were slaughtering anyone they saw. They moved between trees and bushes, trying to find cover from endless incoming fire. Terrorists blew up Guy’s car with an RPG. In a prefiguring of the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, at one point Guy felt that he had to move. Just as he did so, a bullet passed so close he could feel it on his cheek, through the spot where his head had just been.

Guy encountered a terrified man with bulging eyes who could barely speak but managed to warn him that he had witnessed a beheading and other unspeakable atrocities.

As with so many other survivors of the Nova Festival, Guy has suffered painful and enduring Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – and one person who has helped him is Los Angeles-based neuro-clinical psychologist Dr Orli Peter.

In the aftermath of October 7, Dr Peter has been giving pioneering treatment to survivors of the massacre. She has almost 30 years of clinical experience and three post-doctoral fellowships under her belt. She has helped restabilise survivors and witnesses of 9/11, Iranian refugees, Israeli victims of terrorist attacks and families who have fled war-torn countries.

In a nondescript office building in Beverly Hills, Dr Peter has a psychologist’s waiting room straight from Hollywood central casting. Her office, however, is loaded with cutting-edge psychological technology.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, Dr Peter, the American daughter of a Holocaust survivor, pulled together a team and flew to Israel to deliver emergency psychological care. Since then, she has been raising funds to fly the very worst affected survivors out to LA for intensive treatment with her team of neuropsychologists, neurologists and mental health providers.

When she met Guy, he was disassociating: the trauma was so overwhelming that his brain was disengaged from the external world. By his own description, which was supported by neuroimaging, he was connected to the real world only 10 per cent of the time. With his ongoing treatment, this has improved to 40 to 50 per cent of the time. After the treatment, he said: “It’s my first time that I feel that my brain doesn’t have this mess. It’s calm and stable.” 

PTSD is not simply a mental condition – it is neurological and physiological. Our brains function in measurable ways, and PTSD disrupts this normal functioning, altering how neurons communicate. Dr Peter’s treatment begins with a quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) brain scan to reveal these trauma-induced alterations. This helps her understand the neurological sources of the specific symptoms the patient is experiencing and provides insights into experiences the patient may not have been able to articulate. This technique is so accurate that one Nova survivor told her: “You have put into words what I didn’t have the words to describe.” The treatment then uses targeted electrical pulses to reset or correct misfiring brain waves.

Ariel saved more than 30 people at the Nova festival. He came to Dr Peter so jumpy that he could not sit long enough to fill out the intake forms. He was easily triggered by sirens and hearing popcorn popping in a microwave: it reminded him of the sound of rifle fire. When Dr Peter conducted his brain scan, with Ariel’s eyes closed, his brainwaves were chaotic. Every time he closed his eyes, he was haunted by the memory of a girl he failed to save while she was being abducted by Hamas. Dr Peter was able to see the disturbance in his brain function that was activated by this traumatic memory and treat it at the source.

This treatment takes place simultaneously or alongside traditional trauma treatments, but its real strength is in physically changing brain wave patterns, calming the patient down, and getting them to a place where other therapies can be effective.

As a PTSD sufferer myself from army service in Afghanistan, Dr Peter offered to let me try her treatment. First came the brain scan: a swimming cap loaded with electrodes is placed on the head, and a variety of scans are done with eyes opened and closed. My own scan came back showing significant agitation in areas of the brain, and from the results, Dr Peter was able to accurately describe my symptoms without me telling her. We moved on to treatment. The targeted electric shocks felt like someone tapping inside my skull. The optical nerve can pick up the pulses, so I was treated to a spectacular lightning show across my vision. It was not in the slightest bit painful. In the days after, I felt calmer than I had in years.

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Tomer had deep trauma even before the massacre. On October 7 he had endured near misses from shrapnel, and he and his family were trapped in their safe room in Kibbutz Re’im for 26 hours as the battle between Hamas and the IDF raged around them. His prior trauma made Tomer a challenging case for treatment, because dysfunctions are at different and deeper levels in his brain. Dr Peter’s treatment maps this and devises a treatment plan to deal with these different layers. After just 15 minutes of treatment, Tomer said, “I feel like it is taking my body and everything more slow. I feel like it is telling my body, ‘Hey, relax.’”

Rather than physical wounds, these mental wounds of trauma are the defining injuries for many survivors of  October 7. They were exposed to multiple traumatic events over an extended period of many hours. They also must deal with trauma made worse by denying the trauma or victim-blaming. Online they see themselves vilified for having attended the festival. They see people denying the atrocities and lies about them on the world stage.

All these factors contribute to deeply complex post-traumatic conditions. Neurostimulation enables patients to better manage their emotions and interact more effectively with the world in response to these secondary traumas. When combined with psychotherapy, this layered treatment approach becomes exceptionally powerful, helping patients navigate their environment and emotional challenges more effectively.

The events of October 7 have fundamentally altered the way these survivors see the world, leaving it no longer a safe place. Dr Peter’s mission is to help them become stronger and more resilient by calming their responses to traumatic memories. While PTSD is a profound injury that leaves lasting scars, it also presents an opportunity for transformation.

Dr. Peter’s pioneering work in neurostimulation pinpoints and reduces these scars, and it can also help foster new strengths that were not there before the traumatic event. This approach helps October 7 survivors reclaim their lives, which have been cruelly interrupted by the mental wounds inflicted by Hamas’ atrocities. Thanks to Dr. Peter’s innovative methods, there is hope that life for these survivors can one day be beautiful again.

Funds are needed to continue flying the worst affected to LA for treatment. You can support Dr Peter’s team at: israelhealinginitiative.org

​Andrew Fox is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.