Understanding Differences in Reactions After a Disaster

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to today's presentation on Coping after a disaster. This is a series of short videos that I'll be putting out today in order to help you cope with the aftermath of the tornado that occurred last night in Middle Tennessee. Now, if you are watching this after this event has occurred, you know, maybe years later and some other natural disaster has occurred, it is still something that may be useful and helpful to you. Each video is going to focus on a special segment of Coping after a Disaster, so they will each provide you a little bit of different information. We're going to start out by talking about what alters the impact of disaster for different people. Why do some people seem to bounce back just fine and other people don't seem to? One of the things that we want to remember is that the longer there's disruption of normal routines, the worse the stress and traumatic reactions will be. We need to get back into doing what we always did. That way we don't start becoming afraid of going out of the house, becoming afraid of things, or altering our circadian rhythms in a way that we start prompting the development of symptoms of depression or anxiety. Try to get back or maintain your routines as much as possible during this time. Some of the most important things are making sure that you are getting up and going to sleep about the same time that you are eating and drinking about normal. You don't want to start engaging in using a lot of drinking, a lot of alcohol or something like that. You want your body to think that things are status quo as much as possible. Many people are in a state of shock from what they've been through or what they've seen. If you went through something, if you had a loss, if your house was destroyed, your car was destroyed, and there was a lot of destruction, or maybe your workplace or your school was destroyed, it's going to impact your sense of safety. It's going to have an impact on you emotionally, mentally, physically, and interpersonally. That's okay. Recognizing that you may not feel that right away. You may just be in the state of shock, like, oh, my goodness, I can't even believe what I'm seeing. And that's okay, too. That shock will unfortunately wear off after a little bit and you will start feeling feelings and needing to deal with them. Other people may not have directly experienced some of the losses. I can tell you we were very blessed to be in a place that was just north of where the tornado hit. And so our neighborhood in particular did not suffer a whole lot of damage. However, I'm Seeing on the tv, I'm seeing throughout our town that there was widespread, massive destruction. People, you know, died, people lost their homes. And it is palpable to me. And my sense of compassion for my fellow Middle Tennesseans is very strong. And it hurts to see other people experiencing devastation like that. And we want to recognize that first responders and just your general person in the community is often going to feel a sense of grief, of loss, of devastation and fear after something like this. And those feelings are normal. Our feelings are our brain's way of telling us, you need to do something. Fear tells you that there may have been a threat that you might need to prepare to get away from. And a lot of people after something like this may feel a sense of fear, especially because this occurred. This particular incident occurred in the middle of the night when some people were sound out asleep. I know my family woke me up and I had been laying in bed sort of half awake, hearing the sirens, thinking it was an emergency vehicle. And they're like, no, mom, those are tornado. The tornado siren. You need to get your butt up. And I was like, oh. So we all went into our basement shelter and did that sort of thing. But there was still a sense of shock this morning when I got up, and there was still a sense of disruption this morning for us. Again, we were very blessed to be, you know, outside of the immediate path of the tornado, but we still don't have power. We still. There's a lot of debris in our yard and things like that. So it's important to recognize that people are going to see a lot, people are going to have compassion, and their reactions are going to differ. Some things that impact a person's reaction include the size and scope of the disaster. In terms of a tornado, this was a pretty big disaster, and more than 40 buildings have collapsed. There have been almost two dozen people that have been killed as a result of the weather last night, and that number is still potentially rising. So there is a lot of impact to our daily life. There are roads everywhere that are closed. I mean, you can't get from point A to point B without having to go through a detour or running into some police officer or firefighter that is directing traffic. So there is a significant impact on our community. It will also. It's also impacting our community financially because businesses in Lebanon, at least, and I'm sure the same is true in Mount Juliet and other places, businesses are still closed because there is no power. So, you know, restaurants cannot make food. They cannot serve grocery stores are having to stay closed because they don't have cash registers that are on backup generators. There's a lot of stuff that we take for granted that is closed. Gas stations are closed because there's no power to run the gas pumps. We need to recognize that all of that stuff impacts people's ability to get back to normal routines, which will impact their stress reaction. Because everywhere they turn, they're reminded of how powerless that tornado made them. The probability of recurrence is another issue that affects our reactions. And unfortunately, here in Tennessee, we know that there is a probability there's going to be another tornado at some point. However, the possibility or the probability of another tornado of that magnitude that stays on the ground for that long, extremely slim. We need to focus on how long it's been since we had such a disaster. Most years we don't have F3, F4, heaven forbid, F5 tornadoes come through and definitely not ones that stay on the ground for, you know, 60, 70 miles. The probability of something recurring in this size and scope is pretty small. And we need to remind ourselves of that. Yes, it was devastating and it's going to take a while to rebuild. However, you know, next time we have a tornado warning, next time we have a bad thunderstorm, we need to remind ourselves that the chances of us having a recurrence of what happened last night, the probability is extremely small. And the characteristics of the survivor impact their reactions to the situation. Children may not understand what happened, especially really young children. They may not quite gather what happened, especially if they're in an area where things weren't decimated and they see their caregivers getting all upset and being stressed and the TVs on and schools closed and things are changing. They're not going to daycare and their routines are disrupted, but they don't understand why a two year old is not going to be able to grasp what happened. They may start feeling anxious because they perceive, they feel the anxiety from parents. It's important that we communicate with our children that they are safe now. And if they went through a situation, if they had some losses, if they're living in a shelter, if you know you lost part of your roof, it's important to explain to them what happened and help them try to understand that again, they are safe now. And the probability of that happening again when they go to sleep tonight is very, very small. We can't say it's none, but it's very, very small. And I'm going to do another video later on today on specifically helping children address Their stress reactions. A lot of schools with were damaged or destroyed by this tornado. So we are going to see some lingering effects of this disaster that directly impact children for months, maybe even into next school year. People's level of prior distress also impacts their ability to cope with future distress. If you were feeling great, things were going great, you were well read, well read, well fed, fed, well rested and had all the energy in the world, this would still feel overwhelming. This would still be a very powerful experience. If, however, you were depressed, anxious, angry, overwhelmed, dealing with addiction, grieving, if you had other stuff going on that you were already trying to deal with and then this happens, that's like piling it on. And people who were already distressed may have an exponential reaction to this situation because it just feels totally overwhelming. And we do want to make sure we reach out to those people and help them with social support and help them develop a plan so they don't feel so powerless and out of control. People's natural resiliency, well learned resiliency, I guess, also impacts their reaction. So some people can go through something that is traumatic or stressful and they can bounce back. And other people, they go through something that is traumatic and it's hard for them to get back up again. Things that affect our resiliency include our coping skills, our willingness to be aware of what we're thinking and feeling, and having tools, including social support, to address those things. Resiliency encompasses an attitude of courage and determination as well as self awareness and knowing what we need to do to take care of us in a particular situation. If you think of resiliency like a ball, a person who's resilient is a ball that bounces. If you are feeling like you are a ball that has a slow leak or maybe a fast leak in it, that means you're not going to bounce, you're probably going to splat. And we don't want people to splat. So noticing that you have that small leak and feeling, figuring out what to do to deal with it so you can rebound instead of splat is going to help you deal with this situation. The next video we're going to talk about some really practical, actionable strategies that gives you an idea about how people may react or at least why they may react, the way they react. And the main take home thing I want you to take from this video is that the longer people are out of their normal routine, the more distress they're going to experience. And everybody's experience of this event, even though it was the same, we were all there. It was sort of the same event for everybody, but each person's reaction is going to differ based upon a lot of factors. So we need to be compassionate with one another during this time. All right, thank you, and I will see you in the next video.