Brain Fog and Other Cognitive Reactions After a Disaster

Hey there, everybody. And welcome back to this series on coping after a disaster. In this segment, we're going to talk about cognitive reactions or the way our thoughts may change and what may happen in the way we think and our concentration in the immediate and short term aftermath of a disaster. I'm your host, Dr. Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Some of the things people experience after a disaster include problems with concentration, attention and memory, confusion, difficulty making decisions, preoccupation with what happened, recurring nightmares, questioning of spiritual beliefs, and self blame. So we're going to talk about each one of those and what you might be able to do to kind of deal with these effects that may be occurring. The first thing I'm going to say is to recognize that what happened, happened. And if you can adopt this attitude of it is what it is, that you will probably find yourself struggling a lot less with your emotions. It is what it is. It happened. I can't change the fact that it happened. Now I can decide what to do henceforth and forevermore. And that's really what we want to focus on is, is what it is now what? When our threat response system is activated, and we talked about that in the last few videos, we are going to be dedicating the majority of our energy to fighting or fleeing to protecting ourselves to survival, which means we're not going to be allocating a whole lot of energy to concentration, attention and memory. Additionally, the chemicals, the brain chemicals that are surging through our system right now are determined to help us fight or flee and are not the ones that are going to help us really focus. And we need to understand what's going on in our brain. Think of it as a very primitive reaction, like running away from a hungry lion. Our brain is trying to help us survive, so we're not going to be focusing on what we're reading. We may have difficulty focusing on that TV show that we're watching. We may even have difficulty focusing on driving. And you know, you may be more tempted to look around or daydream or have your thoughts wander off. That's okay. I mean, you want to pay attention when you're driving. Please don't just wander around. Make a concerted effort to try to focus when you're driving, but be compassionate with yourself and recognize that now is not the time to try to commit everything to memory. Now is the time to make lists when you're in crisis, even if it's a little crisis or a big crisis, you are going to have more difficulty remembering things. So write it down when you are in a state of distress, you are going to have a harder time searching your memory banks for solutions that have worked in the past. So guess what? Sit down and write it down. Write down 10 things that you have done in the past to help you cope with stressful situations. Write down 10 things that you can to help you cope with feelings of being overwhelmed. And I like certain numbers. You don't have to do 10, you can do five. I generally suggest a particular number of things just so you don't start writing and go, okay, doc, when can I stop? Five or ten things that you can tell yourself. Five or ten things that you have done that have helped you cope in the past. Five or ten things that you can do that help you feel happier. Write those things down. So you can just look at that list and go, all right, this is my menu of options and I'm going to choose one of them to try. And if it doesn't work, I will try something else off the list. You may get easily confused. You may lose track of what day it is and what you're supposed to be doing. I know today I was supposed to teach at noon, but you know what, the power was out. And so my whole day has been a little bit surreal and I'm trying to remember what day of the week it is and what I'm supposed to be doing. And that's again, it's okay. It is what it is. Recognizing that you may get confused a little bit more easily right now is fine. Cut yourself some slack if you have difficulty making decisions. Sometimes it's simple things, what to wear, what to eat, what to do tomorrow, what to do next, what to watch on tv, what, any decisions. Cut yourself some slack. If you have somebody that you can rely on, you can ask, you know, what should I eat for dinner tonight? If you can't just can't make that decision yourself, somebody else may be able to help you make that decision. If you can't figure out what to watch on tv, give somebody else the remote control. Rely on the support of others during this time. If you're having difficulty, you may also reach out to others who, who aren't even involved in the situation. The tornado impacted thousands and thousands of people in middle Tennessee. However, we have loved ones that are in other states. They are not in the midst of some of the chaos that is happening right now. Calling them, hearing their encouragement, hearing their validation and their empathy and their suggested solutions can be very helpful. Going back to that craves again, consistency. Find people who can consistently listen to you when you're feeling stressed, you know you can call them and they're going to pick up, find somebody who can be responsive. When you call them and you're upset, they will hear you and they can be responsive and help you get to a place where you can feel grounded, maybe not happy, but grounded so you can make have a clearer head to make decisions. They are, they will give you attention. They will call and check in on you. They will validate how you're feeling and not tell you that you're silly for feeling this way or your thoughts are wrong. They may help educate you if you are don't have all the information that you need, but they will validate your thoughts and feelings and say, okay, I can see where you might think that they are empathetic. They are willing to try to walk in your shoes and understand how you're feeling right now and they will help you generate solutions. So going back to that craves again when you're preoccupied with the event and a lot of us are, that is a natural cognitive reaction. We want to make sense of what happened because it doesn't feel fit in our brains. We went to bed last night, everything was fine, we felt safe, we got all tucked in and then all of a sudden at half past midnight, all hell broke loose. And we're trying to make sense of what happened and how did this come from quote, out of the blue and how do we prevent it? How do we protect ourselves in the future? What happened? How can we help? We have lots of questions, lots of questions right now. So we may be preoccupied and want to gravitate towards watching the news, hoping that they're going to give us some answers. One of the things I found myself preoccupied with today, and it's just my way of re establishing normalcy, is whether or not Walmart was going to be open. And I live in a small town, you know, if you're in middle Tennessee, you understand that out here in Lebanon, Walmart is one of our major places to go shopping. And I couldn't find any information. I know the tornado went pretty much right over Walmart. I couldn't find any information about whether, how much damage it had incurred, if it was going to be open, if I was going to be able to go, you know, get my groceries. I know that sounds silly, but when we are in a crisis we cling to the idea of returning to normalcy. And I couldn't find anywhere to get that answer. I spent almost an hour looking on my phone, on different websites, going to the Walmart website. You know, I had the TV on, I had my son looking on, you know, different sites and we couldn't find the answer. Was that a reasonable, effective, useful use of energy? Heck no. But it was what I did and I caught myself and I said, you know what? It's either going to be open or it's not. It is what it is. And there are other Walmarts and other shopping centers that I know we're not in the path of the storm. So I need to let go of whether my Walmart was impacted or not. I need to let go of whether my Planet Fitness is going to be open and recognize that I have options. I got this tunnel vision that I wanted my stuff to be fixed and I wanted my routine to be, you know, the way it was. And I was not able or I wasn't at that point willing to look and at the bigger picture. Okay, the ones in my city may not be opened for a while, but there are ones within reasonable driving distance that I can get to. Preoccupation with the event is our way of trying to get answers and restore normalcy and understand what happened. With children, they also are likely to become preoccupied with the event. And depending on their developmental stage, they may have different fears because they understand it differently. If you're preoccupied with the event and children see that, then they're going to think they should be preoccupied with the event and worried about it. I remember this when we had nine, 11 and when we went through Katrina, it was just non stop coverage on the news and we had it on nonstop. And in retrospect, that probably was not the healthiest thing for anybody in my family. But children don't understand and can't conceptualize that the news is reporting something. It's like telling the same story over and over and over again. They feel like as long as it's being reported on the tv, it's still happening. So that can feel very threatening to them if the television is still talking about it, because that means in their mind that means it must still be a threat. We do need to recognize our preoccupations. We do need to set healthy limits for ourselves. Education. Great. Do you need to get your news? Do you need to understand what's going on? Well, figure out. Pick a news channel and watch the broadcast one time through and then turn 7:00am Broadcast, the 7:30 broadcast, the 8:00 clock broadcast, you see where I'm going? And keep doing that all day long. Pick a broadcast, get the highlights and then resume your normal functioning. And it's hard. It does take some discipline to make that happen. You know, if you need to check in again for one broadcast in the evening, okay, so be it. But that's far different than having it on, you know, the other, the other monitor all day. People, adults and children, may have recurring nightmares about what happened. This is more common if you were actually directly, physically impacted by this trauma. But that doesn't mean that you have to have been directly, physically impacted in order to experience recurring nightmares. If you've had similar experiences in the past to this one, it may trigger those trauma reactions and it may bring up maybe when you were a kid, you were in a different tornado or a hurricane or something, and this triggers those feelings. So you may start. Even though you weren't directly impacted by this one, you may start having those nightmares again. Your brain is trying to say, hey, hey, remember, Remember what happened the last time. You know, you need to protect yourself. Survival mechanism. We need to tell that heckler or whatever, that person in the back of our head that is trying to warn us that we are safe. And nightmares are often our brains. If you want to think of it this way. It's our brain's way of dealing with stuff that we haven't effectively filed away somewhere. It's bringing it forward, going, I don't know what to do with this. You've got to put it away before I can let you relax. Some people may question their spiritual beliefs. Why did this happen? Why did this happen to good people? I know two years ago, there was an elderly gentleman in the county north of here whose trailer got flooded, I mean, all the way up to the ceiling. And he, very sweet gentleman, very meager means he lived in a single wide on a piece of property. He had eight dogs, two of them died. And, you know, he was just the sweetest person you could ever hope to meet. And it broke my heart to see that this man was struggling so much and he lost, you know, animals that were so dear to him. And I'm thinking, why? That doesn't make sense. Why does that happen? And people may have a lot of why questions for a while. It's going to be important for them to figure out some answers. If they believe that they're in their higher, in a higher power, then they may need to have a, you know, sit down with their higher power. They may need to talk to a spiritual leader. They may need to figure out, you know, what this means to them within their scope of beliefs. What does it mean that this happened to them? Or what does this Mean that this happened to these people over here. And some people may blame themselves for what happened. They may blame themselves for not getting everybody down to the basement and somebody got hurt in their house. There's generally not a whole lot of self blame after a tornado. In this particular case, I do know with animals like on our farm, if our animals would have been hurt in any way, I know I would have blamed myself. Is it logical? No. But would I have blamed myself? Yes. And recognizing that self blame is a form of anger at ourselves, it's a. We felt a threat, we felt powerless, and we don't like to feel powerless. And figuring out the facts of the situation, I couldn't very well bring the donkeys inside. You know, that's just not something I could have done. And so looking at the facts of the situation, had there something gone wrong? Did I do what I needed to do as much as I could and control all the things or as many of the things as I could that were within my control? If I didn't, how can I do better next time? Can't change the past. Self blame is another word for guilt. And a lot of times, cognitively, it comes from what I call hecklers in your gallery. If you remember back when the Muppets were, you know, a big thing, you can tell how old I am now. But there were those two old guys in the balcony that used to heckle the Muppets all the time. Or think of yourself as a performer. And the hecklers that are out in the audience, they are the ones. The hecklers are the ones that are telling you, you should have done something differently. This is your fault. How are you going to silence those hecklers? First thing, get the facts, know the facts, Know what you could have controlled. I couldn't have gotten my donkey in the barn last night if I had wanted to. I mean, she had a run in that she was able to go into, which is actually our one car garage. But I couldn't have gotten her all the way into the. Into the barn because she hates the barn, especially during a storm. You know, there are a lot of things I could go back over and say, what did I have control over? What didn't I? What can I learn from it? And it's important to have those facts. Arm yourself with facts in order to do battle with the hecklers. Another thing you can do with those hecklers is just ignore them, tell them, you know what? I'm not listening to you. That's not productive right now. And do something else. Engage yourself in something else so you can't hear them. You know how, you know little kids sometimes when you tell them something they don't want to hear, they'll put their fingers in their ears and they'll go, la la la la la la la la la. Well, do that to the hecklers. Not literally, but do something to occupy yourself. Put on some music, watch tv, sing a song really loud so you drown out the hecklers or for a little while and change your focus so you're not repeating those self critical statements in your own head and keeping yourself stressed out, miserable and feeling disempowered. Recovery is all about empowerment. Turn your thoughts towards being a survivor. There's a difference between being a victim and being helpless and hopeless and being a survivor. They go through the same thing, but a survivor is determined, is courageous, and figures out what they have control over and recognizes and accepts those things they don't have control over. Our cognitions, our thoughts go a long way toward either helping us turn down that threat response system and dispute the fact. Like a fire alarm that's going off in your house, that is that fire alarm is telling you there may be a problem, but there may not be. Could just be the rice boiled over again. Our threat response system is like that faulty fire alarm. It is sometimes hypersensitive and it will go off going, there might be a threat. And it's important to check in and see, see if there is a threat. And if you keep telling yourself there is a threat, then the alarm is going to keep going off. If you check it and you say, you know what, there is no threat right now, or I've got it, I've got control over this. I can take whatever it is that boiled over out of the stove so it quits smoking and we can air out the house. Then you can start relaxing a little bit more. There are a lot of tools that you can use to cope with your cognitive reactions. I encourage you to look on our YouTube channel for videos on cognitive behavioral therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy or psychological flexibility for more information.