Exploring Complex Emotional Reactions After a Disaster

Hey there, everybody. And welcome back to our series on coping after a disaster. In this video, we're going to be talking about emotional reactions. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. After a disaster, people are going to have or may have a whole variety of emotional reactions and they may have a lot of emotions all at once and some of them may seem to conflict. And again, that is okay. And I'm going to keep saying that over and over and over again, unfortunately for you in this series of videos, because I want people to recognize that their reactions are their reactions and that's okay. Once they recognize them, they can choose what their look at their options and choose what the best response is for them. People may have a lot of fear right now. And remember, we're going to do another video on helping kids cope with disaster later. I'm just going to talk in general right now, but people may have a lot of fear right now about another tornado happening. They may have a lot of fear about the structural integrity of their house. They may have fear about looting. They may have a lot of different fears that occur. If they haven't been able to get in touch with loved ones that are in another part of the state, they, they may have a lot of fears. You know, this tornado that happened last night took a swath that was, you know, 70 plus miles in length and decimated a lot. People may have fears if their office building or their school or their church was destroyed. They may be thinking, oh my gosh, what would have happened had this tornado come through during the day and we had been in there? And they may be afraid to go back into those buildings. They may overgeneralize and start having fears of going into any big buildings. And it's important that we start addressing those as quickly as possible and helping people look at the facts of situations. We are, a lot of us are anxious right now over what happened because in the course of 45 minutes last night, tens of thousands of people's lives were altered. And you know, that is mind boggling and it is, it's terrifying that something that quick can come out of nowhere and do that much damage. So we're trying to wrap our heads around it a lot right now. And there is a fair amount of anxiety. Recognizing that fear is part of our threat response system. It's our body's way of saying, okay, something really bad just happened or might be getting ready to happen. It's important to look at the situation and figure out if there's a problem and what we can do to protect ourselves. If we're having ongoing fear that may be our brain going, you're still in danger. Well, are you? It's important to check that and say, all right, I'm feeling like I'm still in danger. What are the facts for and against that belief that I'm still in danger? What are the facts supporting that I'm safe? There may still be some elements of danger. I know the fire marshal was saying that as power starts to come back on throughout middle Tennessee, there may be the chance of house fires in, in houses that were not injured, destroyed or experienced destruction from the tornado. So there is still, for some people, the potential threats. There are a lot of other fears that may be occurring and we need to be aware and be cognizant of what we're feeling and what we're thinking and ask ourselves, you know, why am I feeling this way? What am I telling myself or what am I believing that is contributing to my feelings of fear or anger? Okay. Fear and anger are our threat responses to fight or flee. Okay. Once we recognize that we have these reactions and then we explore what our beliefs are that are supporting those fears or anger those feelings, then we can start looking at the facts for and against what we're telling ourselves. A lot of times we'll find that we are not considering the facts. We're using what we call emotion based reasoning and there may not be any factual basis to it. So if we can find the facts, then that can help us start addressing our fear. If we can explore maybe you think maybe you slept through the tornado sirens last night and now you are afraid that you're going to sleep through the tornado sirens again and maybe you won't be as lucky this next time. Okay, That's a reasonable fear. So using that, you know, you can be all tied up in that fear and terrified every time it gets windy outside. Or you can say, what can I do to ensure that this doesn't happen again? What can I do to ensure that I wake up the next time there is an emergency weather alert and make a plan. Some people may experience a lot of guilt right now. Guilt that they can't get out and help their fellow citizens, Guilt that they survived that their house or their person was not injured or didn't experience any destruction and other people's did. Or guilt over a feeling of relief when they walked outside and they said, we dodged a bullet on that one. And then they start watching TV or looking around the neighborhood and realizing that other people weren't so lucky. They May feel guilty that they had feelings of relief. Recognizing that guilt is self anger. Anger at yourself for surviving, anger at yourself for feeling relieved. It's important that we recognize and embrace and acknowledge and validate our feelings. You are a survivor and it is what it is. You didn't choose to be a survivor and choose for other people to experience destruction. It's just how things happen and life is not fair. Sometimes figuring out what to do with your guilt is going to be important. Holding on to guilt, feeling bad, being angry at yourself, being angry at the situation that's using a lot of energy but not doing anything. It's like sitting with your tires stuck in the mud and just spinning your wheels. Uses a lot of gas, but it ain't going to get you unstuck. It's important to figure out what is the next thing I can do to improve the next moment, to move toward what's important to me. For most of us in Middle Tennessee right now, what's important to us is getting back to a sense of normalcy and rebuilding. So instead of being angry or fearful or feeling guilty, I am going to think what is the next thing I can do to use my energy to help my community rebuild. Some people may experience depression or apathy when we are feeling completely overwhelmed. When we're feeling helpless and hopeless, then we may feel feelings of depression and apathy. If somebody was already exhausted or overwhelmed or anxious or a little bit depressed before this happened, this may have really sent them reeling. Recognizing depression means I'm out of gas, I feel helpless, I feel hopeless and figuring out what is it that I can do to take care of myself in order to start feeling better. And on our YouTube channel I have a lot of videos on 100 plus practical tools to defeat your depression. And there's like eight different videos in that playlist that can give you tools that you may be able to use to address depression or apathy. Way too much to go into here right now. But if you are feeling depressed and you want to start taking some steps towards self care, that's important. If you are feeling depressed and suicidal or homicidal, call 911. Watching this video is not what you need to be doing. You need to be going to the nearest emergency room or calling 911 or calling your going or going to your primary care physician asap. Helplessness is another feeling that people feel. I feel completely helpless right now. I'm looking around going I have no idea how to rebuild a house. I have no idea what I can do to help and So I feel a little bit helpless. I feel like I'm standing on the side, gawking, going, I don't, you know, good luck. And what I really want to do is figure out how to help. Helpful. If community organizations, if emergency management, if religious institutions, community places go onto the news, they go onto Twitter, they go somewhere and they say, this is what you can do to help. Because once people have information, once they know what they can do, then they feel empowered. And when they feel empowered and they can do something and anything to help move toward that goal of rebuilding, it provides a sense of power and control and enthusiasm and momentum toward recovery, which helps address a lot of these other dysphoric emotions. Feelings of despair or hopelessness are very common. There was a lot of loss. You know, some of it was stuff. I don't know what the numbers are on, you know, people or pets or anything like that. Some of that stuff I don't want to know, quite honestly. But people are going to often go through a period where they feel a sense of despair. We are grieving right now. We are grieving as a community because of our losses. We lost our sense of safety. We lost our sense of routine. We lost stuff. We lost people. There's a lot of stuff we lost or a lot of losses that we are grieving. And it's going to change how we view things henceforth and forevermore. If our community comes together and is altruistic and helps one another and is patient and kind and all that wonderful stuff, then the next time there's a disaster or the potential for a disaster, we may feel less scared and more hopeful. If, on the other hand, our community disbands and says, good luck, all y' all are on your own, then the next time there's a disaster, we may feel isolated and more anxious. What we went through getting the tornado sirens, you know, next time we hear those, we're going to be reminded of this past event. It doesn't necessarily mean we're going to have another super mega, major hurricane. Not hurricane, sorry, I'm from Florida. Normally tornado. But it may trigger that same stress response in people remembering what it was like. And we need to be sensitive to that. People may be more edgy or irritable when there are impending storm systems coming in. In order to deal with that, it's important again to keep going back to those facts. And our weather people are in the perfect place to help educate us about the danger versus the safety of the situation and remind us that this is probably not going to be another F3 or EF3 or EF4 tornado. But there is the possibility of sporadic tornadoes, which I know that happens a lot in Middle Tennessee. And we need to understand the difference. We need to make sure that everybody has a plan in place for when a major storm system hits, whether it's a blizzard or a tornado or flooding. Those are the three we typically get here in Middle Tennessee. We need to make sure that we have a plan in place for the eventuality that that should happen. A lot of people are already exhausted and stressed and for lack of a better term, really freaking out over the coronavirus. So a lot of people were already worn down, were already stressed out, and then this happened, and it was just one more thing. So we've got a lot of people who are reacting with much more intense stress than maybe they normally would have because it just feels like it keeps piling on. We want to help people see what's going well, focus on what they have control over, and look at the facts in the situation. People may experience resentment. If they experience losses and other people didn't, they may experience resentment. I know, gosh, it's been a couple of years now, but there was a bad storm system that went through, and it took out. We live on a farm, and it took out several hundred feet of our fencing, which, if you're a great big farmer, probably doesn't sound like much, but to us, that was a huge portion of our fencing. And I had no. I went out and it was just laying flat, and I had no idea how to repair it. And none of our neighbors said boo about it. They all saw it down, but none of them said boo. None of them were offering to pitch in and help us put it back up or anything. It felt like we were very isolated. And I know there was a period there where I felt resentful because they didn't even offer to help. And, you know, we live in a relatively small neighborhood. There's only like, 14 houses. So, you know, understanding that there may be feelings of resentment for a variety of reasons, and we want to do everything we can to recognize when we're feeling resentful and check it. You know, we can't control what other people do. And holding on to resentment just is like, again, sitting in that mud and revving that engine, burning up the energy and getting nothing out of it. Resentment is not a useful emotion. Emotional numbness can be too much to feel sometimes. So you just pack it all up in a box, a little Pandora's box, and push it back in the back of your head somewhere. It's like, I can't, I can't feel anything anymore. I am just done. I am done. I can't feel. And when we talk about the fight or flee mechanism, there are four fight or flee. We know those freeze. Some people get frozen and they don't know what to do next. They feel kind of like that squirrel in the road and then forget about it. And usually there's another phrase that you use but fight, flight, flee, freeze or forget it. And when you get to that forget it point, that's that emotional numbness where you're just like whatever. I just, I can't feel. I can't do. I can't react anymore. When we get to that point, we are burned out. And it is crucial that people recognize when they start to feel that way and start looking at their own self care. You're not going to make it go away overnight, but recognizing how you feel and if your loved ones are experiencing any of these, it's important to be empathetic, validate their emotions and be responsive. Remember that craves from the last video. Consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, empathy and solution generation. These are all really important skills to, to use for ourselves and towards other people to help them cope with their emotional reactions. Finally feeling overwhelmed. There is a lot of stuff going on. People who work hourly, for example, I know the fast food restaurants, not to name any, but all the fast food restaurants on this side of Lebanon at least are shut down and they're going to lose an entire day's worth of receipts probably if not more because the power wasn't back on. And I don't know how long the power is going to be out for them, but that's a loss. And the people who normally get paid hourly to be there probably didn't get paid today because they weren't able to go into work. And that's going to affect their ability to pay their bills, pay their electric. You know, there are ripple repercussions when something like this happens and people can start to feel overwhelmed really quickly. And we need to be compassionate. Remember that there are a lot of community resources out there. If you call United Way211 and you can get connected with a lot of the community resources that are out there that may be able to help you if you are, you know, having difficulty paying your light bill this month because you were out of, you didn't get to go to work for a few days because of this disaster decimated some of the schools so your kid wasn't able to go to school, you had to call in sick for a few days and you end up, you know, behind in your finances. You know, there are a lot of reasons things like this happen. And United Way 211 is a great place to start to get connected with community resources. I hope that gives you a place to start with dealing with your emotions. One thing I didn't mention in there, and I will mention because I think it is so important, is to add in the happy. And I know that sounds stupid, but it is so important to actually force yourself to do things that normally make you happy. They may not make you as happy as usual right now. Like playing with my dogs makes me deliriously happy most of the time. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now, so it might make me content instead of deliriously happy, but it's still doing something to prompt the release of those happy chemicals in our brain. Do things that make you happy. Arrange your environment. Put triggers in your environment that make you happy. I your sense of smell is your strongest trigger for memories. What smells make you happy? And try to have those smells around. It doesn't even have to be essential oils for me. Fresh baked cookies. I know that sounds like it's true for everybody, I think, but fresh baked cookies or birthday cake, I love the smell of those. Coffee. Love the smell of that. Putting things in my environment that I smell and I'm like, well, that smells really good can help release some of those happy chemicals into our brain, which can also prompt some physical relaxation and help turn down that stress response system so we can get better sleep and feel less wound up and irritable. Make a list of 10 things that make you happy. Figure out how to start doing them today. You don't have to do all 10 today, but do at least one of them today. Go outside and play ball with your kids. Blow up a balloon and try to keep it from touching the ground in the house with your kids or with your dog. My dog loves playing with balloons. And it will give you a break from focusing on the drama of the day when you're just focusing on that one thing that makes you happy.