Ask Doc Snipes Live Q&A on How Disasters Trigger Abandonment Trauma
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes explains how disasters reactivate abandonment trauma through three pathways: feeling abandoned during the crisis itself, when relief agencies withdraw during recovery, and indirectly through guilt or vicarious trauma. She covers systemic gaps in coverage, the role of neighbors and mental-health professionals, and why first responders need ongoing support.
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Foreign. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to our Friday live Q A. Today's topic is how disaster can trigger abandonment trauma. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Now, obviously, this is a live Q A, so I'm hoping you are coming in with questions about how trauma or how disaster reactivates abandonment trauma. And we can work through some of those things. But while we're waiting for people to join, I think it's important to recognize all of the different ways that people experience abandonment during a disaster. When the disaster is happening, they may feel abandoned by their higher power. When disaster, you know, after the. The acute episode of the disaster, they may feel abandoned by relief efforts by, by the country, by the state, by fema, by whomever, because they're not getting their needs met. And it could be that those organizations are on the way and they just don't realize it yet. Or maybe those organizations are on the way or not on the way, but I don't know. But they feel a sense of abandonment when they're waiting for help and waiting for help and waiting for help, and it never comes. And I want you to reflect how this may mimic experiences that people had in a chaotic past when their caregivers were not there to help them or their caregivers abandoned them, or they're, you know, they were wondering sort of, where's this God that everybody talks about if I'm in this abusive situation? So there are several things in the early disaster process that can trigger abandonment reactions and re. Trigger abandonment abandonment reactions. As the. As we get further away from the acute disaster, we start seeing groups that came to help in the recovery process. We start seeing them pull out. We start seeing all of the federal resources leaving our area, and we're looking around going, we haven't rebuilt yet. The problem is not gone yet, and you're leaving. And so people often feel very abandoned when the resources that were deployed to help them leave. And we can understand this from a logical perspective that they've got to balance their resources. But it's also really hard when people are still feeling like their world is completely upended and they don't really know what the next steps are that they need to take. And then all of a sudden, the organizations that are supposed to be helping them kind of disappear, and they're like, what do I do now? And that's when it becomes really important for neighbors to help neighbors and really important for mental health providers, professionals, to be able to reach out to people and help them get into their wise mind, help them focus on identifying what's important in their rich and meaningful life and help them develop plans, set goals in order to start reaching those. United Way 211 is one resource for anybody in a crisis of any sort, not just a disaster. They are one place that you can go. And I've mentioned this Before, United Way 211 only has data on organizations that have opted to participate in their programs, which is fine, but it means you're. If you connect with United Way211, you're only going to have a subset of the available resources. And back in the day, when I volunteered at the crisis center, we had. And I don't even have a book that's thick enough. We had three volumes of printed paper that were literally about whatever this is, 6 inches thick that had all of the different resources that were available in our area that were signed up with United Way and we would have to flip through those. This was, you know, before computers. I know, right. And there were a lot of resources that United Way was available to connect to. It's also important to recognize that not all United Ways are created equal. Some United Ways are very small and very focused on one thing. Other United Ways, like the United Way of. I think it's northern Alabama, the one that's based in Birmingham, they do a ton of stuff. Oh my gosh, they provide so many services and they're involved in doing so much. And there's. And then there's everything in between. So it's important to recognize that your local United Way may not be the best place. It may be a great place, maybe a great place, but it may not be the best place, depending on how big and effective they are, to identify resources to help people connect with the things they need, such as insurance, such. Such as shelter, such as help. I don't remember what Governor DeSantis called it. I think it was like muck and dump or something. But going into places that have been flooded and ripping out all the drywall and getting up the carpets and the padding and everything else that needs to be taken out so they can hopefully dry out the studs and start rebuilding. Helping people connect with places that they can get medication. If you're in one of those disaster impacted areas, you may not be able to get to your local pharmacy. So how do you access medication? And that's when. Where mental health professionals can step in and ease that transition between when all the disaster resources are there and when they leave. Now I'm seeing things in the media that imply that the presence of disaster resources may not be nearly as plentiful as they were during Katrina, during Harvey, during some of those others. And so at this point, mental health providers may need to be reaching out and starting to stem that. Stem that gap right now. And that's one way we can help people keep from feeling like they're being abandoned. We can reach out to people, we can offer help. Not everybody's going to want it, not everybody's going to be ready for it, but we can provide that knowledge to them that somebody is there and somebody cares. People may react far more strongly to what's going on right now, even if they're not in the thick of it, so to speak. They may be 100, 200, 500 miles away, but they're suddenly having this trauma reaction again. And that, again, may come from them feeling powerless, feeling guilty for not doing more than feeling unable to cope with what's going on because they've been in similar situations before, or maybe because they are empathizing and they feel in some way like they're abandoning people because they're not quitting their jobs and traveling 500 miles to. To help out. And again, right now, getting to the. Some of those areas is not possible because there are no roads getting there. They are making progress. They are making progress quickly, which is awesome. We also want to recognize the first responders, the law enforcement, the emergency paramedics, the soldiers, the National Guard workers who are diligently working right now to try to help rescue people and get this initial phase in the mission completed. We don't want to abandon them either. We don't want to forget about them. Most, or at least a lot of people who are first responders are very capable of compartmentalizing. They're seeing stuff that you never should have to see, never ever should have to see. And they're able to compartmentalize it so they can accomplish the mission right now. But at some point, that's going to have to be dealt with. They can't just keep that compartmentalized and locked up forever, whether they want to or not. It's just not how life works. And, and we need to make sure that they know we're not abandoning them. We're not forgetting about them and how hard they're working and what they're going through for us so we don't have to go through it. So those are some of the things that we're talking about in terms of how disaster can re. Traumatize people who already have experienced abandonment. And that's something, Babe, you bring up that is interesting because again that can be re trauma. You can be be being re traumatized again by the disaster because there's a lot of people that are arguing with each other and there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of sort of ankle biting if you will. And that can remind a lot of people of unstable relationships and unstable environments that they've been in before and it can cause them to feel even more anxious about what's going on. What's important right now is when we start feeling our feelings of abandonment, we need to examine what's going on based on the facts in context. And is this person angry at me? Is this person getting ready to abandon me? Is this a threat to me? Even if they do walk out right now, as an adult I can take care of myself. Would it suck? Possibly. But it wouldn't be the end of the world. Eight year old me would have a very different answer to that. So I need to figure out is this situation actually a threat to me in this context or am I feeling those feelings that I experienced as a child? And if so, how do I comfort that inner child to feel more secure in what's going on right now? For those of you who are here and kind of hanging out in the wings, I know it's a Friday. I'm glad you're here with me. We've going into the weekend, it's probably going to be a long weekend for a lot of people. What issues surrounding and again this series this week has been focused on disaster recovery and emotional management for people after a disaster. And, and what can you do to improve your own mental health? What can you do to maintain your sleep and your circadian rhythms? What can you do so you are fully recharged and fully present and can use your energy in a way that makes sense to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life and, and be living through a time of turmoil and natural disaster. It is definitely important to focus. Remember we've talked about before about Maslow's hierarchy and that bottom level is food, water, shelter, clothing, medical care. The next level is safety and we need to get those needs met before we can focus on self esteem and love and belonging and all that other stuff that a lot of behavioral health professionals focus on. But if our basic needs aren't getting met, if our body is our body factory is shutting down for some reason or miscalibrated because of what's going on, then it's going to affect every other piece of our life. So I think That's a very, very good point that we need to. And a lot of people think it's silly during the time of a disaster or a crisis to focus on their own self care, but it's true. And I've mentioned before, if you don't charge your phone, and for me it's every night, if you don't charge your phone every night, then by early the next day it's going to be nothing more than a paperweight. The same thing is true for our bodies. If we don't take care of our bodies and give it. Get. Give our bodies what they need to function and if we don't take care of our bodies and allow it, allow ourselves to sleep and maintain our circadian rhythms, then we're very quickly going to become not much more than a couch potato paperweight. We're gonna burn out. And that's just a fact of life. It's not a question. It's a. The only question there is how long it will take before you run out of energy, burn out, hit the wall, whatever you want to call it. Are there any other questions? Okay, I see that our viewership is plummeting rapidly. So I guess that means the questions that were here and I answered all the questions, so I guess that means we are done for today. I will see you all next Monday for sure. And then we'll play it by ear whether we're going to do daily lives or it's just we're going to go back to the Monday schedule starting next week. Everybody have an amazing day. And remember, you can always query my AI coach at. All ceus.com/doc snipes that is the easiest way to. Or I guess I need to put the HTTP that is the easiest way to query the videos that I have and try to get answers in your own amount of time. Have a great day everyone.
