Revealing Ways Disaster Impacts Our Relationships

Welcome back, everybody. We are continuing our series on coping after a disaster. And in this video, we're going to be talking about interpersonal reactions and how it affects our relationships. I AM your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Now, so far, we have talked about a variety of different reactions to trauma and disaster. And it's important to recognize that happiness, as well as traumatic events and distress, affect us in a lot of different ways. And I have created the mnemonic device called pacer. When things happen for good or for bad, they affect us physically, affectively, which means emotionally, cognitively, environmentally, and relationally, which also means interpersonally or in our relationships. If you can remember to check yourself when you are feeling distressed for your reactions in each one of those areas and to look for things in each one of those areas that might be causing your reactions, it will help you understand and start addressing the causes of your distress lot more quickly. Interpersonal reactions vary widely, just like people's emotions vary widely after a disaster. The first one we often see is altruism. During this time, we often see people being kind to one another, helping out, helping a neighbor, going over and helping somebody clean up their yard after the storm goes through. Altruism is a great interpersonal reaction, and it helps us use our energy to rebuild our community and reestablish our connections. The other side of that is distrust. Unfortunately, there is also a certain amount of distrust that may occur in people after a disaster, especially if there has been some damage to their home or environment that makes them feel unsafe. Looting, for example, can be a problem if power is out, because that means sometimes burglar alarms may be out. People's lights aren't going to be on to be able to see burglars. People aren't going to be home because they're in shelters. There can be a lot of reasons that looting may be more problematic or prevalent. It's important for people to really, as I said in the last video, examine the facts. How likely is it that looting is going to occur in your area, and what can you do to protect your stuff? If it is likely we live out in the suburbs, of the suburbs, not quite urban, in a very small neighborhood, and, you know, there's like 10 houses in our entire neighborhood. It's not really worth a burglar's time to come out to our neighborhood, even if we did have, you know, a lot of destruction and in our houses. Recognizing that. Recognizing that the chances of looting in our neighborhood are really very slim can help quell some of those anxieties. And distrust of others. We also may see gouging price gouging. People that are coming out to give you bids on repairing your house. They know you got to get it repaired. So we see a lot of people jacking up their prices on what they're doing because they know people don't have a choice. I know I drove by a particular gas station today, and every other gas station in town that I know of that I was able to try to get to was closed because there was no power to run the pumps. This one gas station was open, and guess what? Miraculously, the gas at that station had gone up 30 cents overnight. And, you know, that made me kind of sad that capitalism would trump altruism. But that's just me. People may distrust others during this period, and we need to check our distrust. We need to be aware of things that may happen and keep ourselves safe. But we don't want to be overly vigilant and start assuming everybody has malicious intent. And there's a fine line between that. We need to regularly check our beliefs about a situation for the facts. Is this truly someone with malicious intent? Is this truly something malicious, or is this just the way it is? I mean, getting roofs repaired, for example, is expensive. So is this a normal cost? One thing you could do is ask to see bids that were given for similar jobs six months prior when it wasn't right after a tornado, for example. Examining options to quell your distrust is going to help you reduce your anxiety and reduce your misery. When you feel distrustful, you don't want to connect with others. When you don't want to connect with others, it's harder to rebuild the community. You feel more isolated, less supported. There's lots of, you know, cascading negatives that can happen from that. So be aware, keep yourself safe, but don't look for malice in everything. Irritability can happen with others. We are stressed. We were already stressed going into last night. Between the coronavirus and the elections and the stock market, a lot of people were really feeling pretty dizzy from all of the, you know, chaos that feels like it's going on right now. And this was just one more thing on top of that pile of unpleasantness that's happening right now. So it's not surprising that people are out of energy, if you will, to focus on the niceties. And they may be more irritable. They already feel stressed. They feel like there's a threat, they feel like there's chaos, which means that threat response system is activated and irritability is just Basically think of it as a mild form of anger. When we're irritable, we're saying, I can't take anymore, you know, go away. I cannot take any more input. I'm overwhelmed, or you're not understanding, or we're saying something with our behavior. When we get irritable, it is important to recognize that that pushes away our supports. What do we do about it? Take good care of yourself. Try to make sure that you're getting adequate quality sleep, which means still trying to get seven to nine hours if you're an adult. Reducing stimulants like caffeine and nicotine before bed. Making sure that you're not overindulging in alcohol. Or as alcohol exits the body, our anxiety chemicals go way up because alcohol exits the body faster than our body can rebalance the chemicals. You know, there's a long chemical explanation. The take home message is as alcohol leaves your body, you're typically going to feel more irritable, more anxiety, and that may make you want to drink more or that just may make you irritable and impatient with other people. Impatience is another thing right now that can happen because other people, well, everybody is going through stuff right now, lots of stuff. And it's important for us to take a breath and take a break and remember, all right, I don't know what this person's going through right now. Breathe. Look for three other explanations for why something may be happening besides you. It could be that person is just having a really bad day right now. Ask yourself, if somebody irritates you, take a breath and say, number one, is getting angry and staying angry about this useful or helpful to me? Feeling better? The answer is probably no. And number two, ask yourself, I wonder what it's like or what's going on in that person's head right now that can make them, that's making them so unhappy. You know, try to walk a mile in their shoes, if you will. That may help you have a little bit more compassion. If you meet irritability with compassion, it generally defeats the situation. We may be hypersensitive right now. You may cry easier, you may feel like you've got a really thin skin. You may be more touchy, you may be more irritable. All of those feelings are okay. Our emotions are on hypersensitivity right now. And recognizing that that's going on is half the battle. Recognizing that your kids may be more hypersensitive, recognizing that your spouse may be more hypersens sensitive is important. And taking that time to breathe and think before we speak, one of the things that the Rotary Club says is when we speak, we need to think. And that's a mnemonic device. T is it truthful? H, is it helpful? I is it inspirational? N is it necessary? And K, is it kind? We could save ourselves a whole lot of problems in relationships if we just think before we speak. There may be increased conflicts when people are irritable, hypersensitive, not getting enough sleep, in pain, you know, having all these feelings of things being out of control and being overwhelmed, it's easier to get into conflicts because we want to try to control something. And when someone stands in our way of controlling that, it can cause more conflicts. Especially. Well, not especially if you are living in the same house, but people that you are in close proximity to for an extended period, like at work or at home, take a breath when this happens. And I know I keep saying take a breath, but that's one of the easiest ways to help start triggering that rest and digest reaction and turn down that threat response system. Ask yourself, is this an effective use of my energy? Is this worth fighting about? Sometimes it's not. And recognizing that is going to be really important. Some people will withdraw from all other people at this point in time. They just cannot take any more input. They can't take any more people, they can't take any more disappointment. They can't take it and that's okay. That is a self protective mechanism, however, that also prevents them from being able to get social support and practical support as needed. If you tend to withdraw when you feel overwhelmed, when you feel distressed, or recognize that and identify ways you can cope and ways you can maintain your relationships. If this desire to withdraw goes on for more than a couple of days. If you look at the book the Five Love Languages, another thing that you can do during this time where people tend to be hypersensitive is to communicate with them in their love language. And you can look that up online. Not going to go see super deep into it, but for example, if one of their loved languages is random acts of kindness, then doing something nice for them, even just making them a card or baking them cookies, could mean a lot. If one of their love languages is touch, then giving them a hug might be meaningful and help them understand or feel like you're still connected, like you still care. It's harder for us to interpret other people's intentions and meanings when we're under stress. So if we communicate to them in their love language, they are more likely to hear it and it is more Likely going to help develop connections in your relationship instead of break those connections. During times of distress, sometimes people feel rejected or abandoned, partly because they may be hypersensitive to indications of rejection or abandonment. But if they're not getting the help they need, when they need it the way they want it, they may feel rejected. And it's important not to do things for people that they can do for themselves, but not to leave them out there hanging. If they can do something for themselves, walk them through it, encourage them, be there to support them, but still encourage them to do it on their own. If they need help, be willing to say what is it that I can do to assist you in this particular situation? And as I mentioned earlier, after a disaster, some people may be hyper controlling. If normally they like to control things when all everything seems to be going into chaos, they may want to control things even more because that's how they get a sense of grounding. That's how they feel okay? And when you get in the way of them being able to control something, they may lash out more strongly. If you are a hyper controlling person, recognize that that is a tendency you have and be willing. When people suggest something else or do it a different way, be willing to step back and ask yourself, even though this isn't the way I would have done it, is this an acceptable outcome? A lot of times the answer is going to be yes. And it's important to be able to pick your battles, so to speak, during times of distress because there are a lot of things drawing on your energy. It's important to nurture relationships that goes back to that craves. Remember the A stands for attention. Nurture your relationships during this period of time so you're not just taking all of the karma out of your karma bank in that relationship, but your you may take some and then put some back. You need to be there for that person, just like that person's being there for you. Nurture with the five love languages. Be willing to be consistent, responsive, attentive, validating, empathetic and willing to help generate solutions in order to move through this incident or this situation with your self, with your friends, and with your community. In the next video, we're going to talk specifically about children. Children are not little adults. They think very differently cognitively. That's just how they're wired. We develop certain thinking skills as we get older and it's important to understand what where children are at cognitively and what they might need during a and after a disaster situation. Remember, disasters may happen in 45 minutes. But it may take months for people to really feel like they're back to a system of normal for them. So a lot of these reactions may go on for a few months. Sometimes they may subside for a while, and then there may be a resurgence. Being aware that that is totally normal is really important in the recovery and rebuilding process.