Coping After Tragedy: A Conversation on Collective Grief, Trauma & Healing

I am a clinician and an editor at Pesi Publishing, and I'm both honored and sad to be here today with two wonderful experts on grief.

First and foremost, David Kessler, a prolific leader in the. In the field of grief, author, speaker, longtime Pesi family member. Thank you, David, for being here.

And also Andrea Doran, who is a clinician, speaker, author, and newer Pesi family member that we're thrilled to have. Thank you both for being here.

A little background information. We put this together in about 24 hours. We knew that we needed to have some kind of discussion, some kind of thoughtful conversation about the school shooting that occurred earlier this week in Texas. And we couldn't not do anything. So I especially thank the both of you for being here so quickly and arranging things so that we could be here and have this conversation. I know that our audience really appreciates it.

David, I kind of want to start with you, given your history, both personally and professionally, how has this. This most recent, which is sad to say, the most. This most recent tragedy, excuse me, affected you?

Thank you. And thank you for putting this together so quickly. You know, there. There's an old saying I remember from the hospital world that when there's a code blue, the first thing to do is check your own pulse. And so that's sort of my motto that, you know, immediately when this happened. As some people know, I have a career that came out of a tragedy of a shooting in my childhood. So I immediately got that flashbacks to devastation of a shooting. What that's like. Also being a bereaved parent myself, when I started seeing parents trying to find out about their kids, oh, my gosh, you know, that really just was a punch, as you can imagine. And I, I thought about that, and then.

I went to.

Something I use with clients a lot is that was then, this is now, my shooting. What happened in my childhood, my son dying, all those things are feelings that need to be attended to, and there's a time and a place to attend to them. And it was also, what do I need to do professionally? That was then, this is now. I'm a professional who's going to show up and help.

So it didn't even start like that day. It started the middle of the night. My site's grief.com and during the night, we were turning that over, changing it so it had tips for shootings and tips for children to really be a resource. In this, we gathered, we have hundreds of grief educators. We set up a program like you're doing, to make sure they get tips and we respond to them, and we had a meeting with them yesterday. There was actually someone, a therapist who was at the site who came on with us, and you called. You know, we're all sort of thinking about how can we help this community, how can we help each other? How can we help all the clinicians who are helping everyone and then also trying to take care of ourselves in the middle of it.

All. Right, Right. You're absolutely right. Andrea, what was your. What was your experience? What was your reaction initially?

Well, I also want to thank you and Pessy for putting this together so quickly. I think like the rest of the nation and really world, I was really shocked. And being a mom and a psychotherapist, my first kind of concern was for all the kids and the families in.

The community.

In Texas. But really in the world, you know, we're experiencing this far too often. And I have really young kids. They're not in school yet, but it. It gives me a lot of anxiety. Initially, my initial response was a lot of anxiety about sending my kids off to school and, you know, considering their safety, you know, kind of like David was referring to. As a therapist, I've got a lot of therapist tools. And so, you know, I was able to kind of collect myself and really start to think about some of the coping skills that I know for myself and I use for myself just a lot of psycho kind of sensorial techniques. And so it was a lot of grounding, a lot of helping myself remember that I'm safe now in this moment, checking in with my kids, snuggling them a little extra tighter, and then supporting our community, and then also some more national communities, as I was responding, as most therapists were, to the reaction of others during this time. So I think David said it really well. When, you know, we have to sort of react ourselves, then we have to be able to take care of ourselves, and then we have to reach out to community, so.

Right, right. I think that. I think both of you spoke so eloquently to the therapist experience, which is.

Oftentimes we bypass our own experience, and we want to help right away. Right. But I love that both of you said I had to check in with myself first. You know, you have to experience those feelings of anger and frustration and sadness and devastation. And it, unfortunately, this has become all too common, these kinds of. This kind of violence, and particularly within a school with very young children. David, I'm really curious. I know you were on the front lines of Sandy Hook when that occurred. It's horrendous that we're here again, what are your thoughts on.

What was helpful then and would it be helpful now?

Well, and I was.

Privileged, saddened, so sorry to be talking to some of those parents after it happened at Sandy Hook. And I wasn't like right there at the school. So I don't want to give anyone that impression. But you know.

It'S so overwhelming for a community. It's really hard to prepare for any of this. And it's interesting I saw that yesterday. So many clinicians reached out and said, I want to go, can I just show up? Can I get there? Can I help? And I think it's actually interesting that we do a really good job. Like a lot of times if I go to somewhere it's on behalf of through the police department because I think many times in mental health services.

Everyone'S so overwhelmed in their day to day keeping up. It's hard to formulate what if we have a tragedy and we're the affected ones, how do we bring help in? So I think that's one of the lessons of like how do we, if we need help, get outside help to be able to access us and come. Because the last thing you need is, you know, just a lot of people showing up going, we can help. And everyone's like, well, this is us, this is our community and communities want to help themselves. The second thing is there's that feeling in all of us, we've got to do something now. Grief shadow, you know, there's going to be unfortunately time, months, years to dive in and help people after this. You know, we, we, it's one of our issues in grief. We like, let's get it all handled the first month. No, right. There's no handling this the first month.

You know, absolutely. I, Grief has a long shadow is a beautiful way to word that because I think particularly within this field, as you mentioned, but then within at least the United States, you know, that the attention span is short and there's a lot of reasons for that that we probably don't need to go into. But I always wonder about after the cameras are gone, after this coverage is over and these families are trying to heal and trying to move forward in this community, as you said, is trying to move forward. I just, I can't imagine what that feels like. And in some ways I'm sure there's probably a relief to have the cameras gone and the coverage, you know, ending so that they can focus on, on.

Their healing and give you an idea of sort of one of the things I find interesting with the cameras and all that is, you'll often hear on the TV news report, you know, the grief counselors have been sent in, those of us in the field. No, there's no grief counseling going on in these moments. This is getting kids to safety, getting people reconnected, the horrific process of identifying, delivering bad news, you know, grief counseling so much later.

Right, right. You're absolutely right. Andre, I know you specialize very much in working with children who are in grief or have experienced some kind of traumatic loss of psychiatric. Some kind. What do you, what do you suggest for families, caregivers, grownups in children's lives as just some starting place, a starting place for. For starting to work through this.

I think what's really important for caregivers, therapists, any kind of person that's supporting young children to remember is that we first have to care for ourselves before we can offer any sort of care or support to children. And really, in our caring for ourselves, we are caring for our children. So I think that's really number one, the first thing we need to think about. And self care really comes down to taking care of our basic needs at the very least. And it comes down to allowing ourselves to experience some self compassion. And self compassion is simply treating yourself the way you would treat a dear friend. So if your dear friend was going through the same thing you were going through, how would you treat that person? And we can support the parents that we work with in talking to them and really prioritizing self care and self compassion. I also think it's really important for parents and caregivers and therapists to remember to be developmentally, appropriately upfront, honest and concrete with kids about what's going on. And again, as therapists and help in the helping profession, we can support parents in finding ways to do this. And then thirdly, I think reassuring safety and making sure that kids and families are able to kind of come back in even just the smallest ways to feeling a very like small semblance of, of safety and continuing to reassure our kids that they are safe is really important, especially after anything tragic happens. And that's important in the community itself, but also nationally and worldwide because there's a lot of vicarious trauma that can occur from these really big events that happen.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think even from a distance, you know, I'm in Wisconsin currently, you know, I'm nowhere near the site. And we're, you know, we're talking about collective grief, collective trauma, you know, and it's, it's palpable for everyone, you know, who's frankly a human and has witnessed all of this. So I. I think you're right. I think focusing on our own wellness is for first, because you can't show up for anyone else until you've shown up for yourself.

Yeah, I agree. I think keeping things simple, putting one foot in front of the other, your basic needs. I mean, this is crisis mode, Right? And as you said, David, the grief counseling, so to speak, isn'. It hasn't even started yet. We're not even there yet.

You know, it's that fix it society. We want to fix it. And we have to remember, you know, when it comes to grief and trauma, it's. It's not about fixing. It's about being. You know, I want to pick up on something you said, Kate, about the collective trauma, the collective grief that's in the air. I want to add for some, there's a lot of people out there who are really what I call practical grievers, practical feel heirs. And, you know, we say to them, oh, my gosh, you know, I cried last night, or I was so angry about the shooting. And our practical friend goes, you didn't know those kids. What's the issue? And we have to remember, oh, that's not a moment for an argument. That's a difference in style. That's, you know, some of us are more affected, probably those of us in this profession we're more in tune to. It doesn't have to be us for us to take it on and feel it and know what those. The pain in those faces mean. So I think, you know, we all have to. When it comes to collective grief, if someone else doesn't feel it, our work is not to get them to feel it or vice versa. You know, it's just an interesting thing to think about.

I'm really glad you said that, because even people in my own life are asking, why are you so affected by this? You know, and I think the key to what you just said is that that's okay, too, you know, that there's room for everyone. There's no hierarchy of pain. There's no. This is not a contest or, you know, something to convince somebody of. So I'm really glad you shared that. That's. That's wonderful.

And if I could add to that, I think our responses to grief and to tragedy are just as vast as the tragedies and the losses that we experience. And so in our grief avoidant society, we often tend to judge others when they have any kind of expression of grief. So, you know, just to kind of follow up on that, I think it's really important to sort of come back to ourselves and really assess who, you know, what the judgments are we're having about others who are or are not having the same experience that we're having. Right.

I think that extends to speculation about the. The shooter, speculation about the shooter's family, the victim's families, who was involved, who wasn't. You know, we're quick to speculate, Judge.

And I think part of that is because we just want something that is sure, even though it's not really sure. And it's hard for us to sit in the gray and not know and not draw conclusions and not be, you know, sure of something. So I think that's a big takeaway for me for this conversation is understanding that there's room for all reactions and all thoughts and all opinions, you know, none more valid than another.

And the complexity of it, you know, not just the political and the gun debate and all the debates in that. What I found myself yesterday, or maybe it was the day before when it first happened. I work with so many parents who. Their children died as a result of bullying in a school system. And then when I heard.

The shooter was. I heard some news, was possibly bullied, and that was one of the traumatized, you know, I instantly had, oh, no.

Bullying.

And I had this compassion, and I went, wait, is there compassion for the. For the shooter? Oh, but then what about his parents? And, you know, there's all those feelings we have, and it's just. It's a lot for all of us to unpack and think about.

It is.

Go ahead, Audrey.

No, go ahead. I was disagreeing.

I was just thinking that I was reading something last night, actually, about this.

And.

I don't remember who it was said, you know, it's okay to hold both. It's okay to hold.

Gratitude that your family and your child is okay and that your community is safe at this moment, and sadness and profound grief and anger and all of those things. It's okay to have compassion for the shooter, the shooter's family, all of those things, and still have compassion. You know, again, we come back to this like either or, you know, we want to paint a picture of a monster, paint a picture of, you know, in any situation. And again, finding that gray and realizing that there's room for both, I think is where I wish, you know, nationally and collectively we could work on that. But especially in these kinds of situations.

And then there's so many of us, I would think the majority of us that have so many concerns about our mental health system, and we're such huge advocates for it, and we see the constraints of it and the limitations every day that we want a system that catches people and safeguards them before it gets here. And how frustrating that is.

Yes. There's such a clear pattern. There's such clear data about how we get to a point like this. And so much of that is about disconnect and. And, you know, lack of nurturing. And there's all kinds of other pieces that play into this that we know as professionals in our field. Like that's what we're trying to build. We're trying to build that connection. We're trying to build before it gets to this. Before. Right. There's so much we can do preventatively that, you know, by no means can you prevent all acts of violence. That's. That's not what I'm suggesting. But there's so much we can do within the field. And you're right, it's frustrating to see when, you know, it's not. It's not getting the funding it needs or it's not getting the support it needs or whatever it may be. Yeah.

I just also want to go back to also for clinicians who, you know, I think we see so much of the world that's horrible. We see the burdens that people carry. And I think sometimes we overreact with our own children. I mean, I'm the first to admit, years ago, when I would work in the hospital system, we would have a child come into the emergency department who was hit by a car on their bike and died. And I would come home and I would be like, bikes are going in the garage. I'm locking them up. Don't ask any questions.

I. I had to, like, come to grips with those overreactions because of what we see. I mean, I talk about, I never get a headache. I only get a brain tumor. Because we just see so much in the world that is real for us.

And I think it's really important to note that those reactions are really normal. That's, again, our nervous system trying to.

Make to what we're seeing. They are.

Exactly. Yeah. We're trying to make sense and we're trying to protect and prepare. And so it's really normal to have those reactions. And then the healing, I think, comes from noticing, observing, and then being able to kind of ground ourselves in the truth. But I think, yeah, that's just. I mean, as you were talking, I was even thinking about my own reaction to this tragedy. I'm homeschooling my kids. You know, immediately, that was my. My response. And. And I kind of had to pull back and recognize, okay, this is coming. Coming from really my. My emotion, mind and my fear.

And so it's. Again, you have to just kind of pull back and assess and really notice what messages are my. My body and my nervous system sending me.

But.

But really also giving yourself compassion. Those responses happen just now.

Give yourself permission in that moment to go, yep, homeschooling. Yep, I'm gonna go there. It's okay.

No, I didn't. I did not do that. No, I will be honest. I was like, I can't homeschool my children. But.

But.

But it was, you know, my. My first reaction. Honestly, though, that's a. A great technique that we teach a lot of our patients is go there. Give yourself permission to go all the way to that. That thought process, or walk all the way through that video, you know, and. And see what happens. And. And I think that can also be really helpful in pulling back, is allowing ourselves to go there so that we can pull back, you know?

Andrea, I'm curious.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, please, David, go ahead.

I was curious because something I use with myself, with clients, with everyone, with my online groups, is I think about. And I used it with my kids. When I would put the bikes away, I would go. It's a moment to think about probable versus possible. Yes, it's possible my kids could also be hit by a car. It's possible there is a shooting, and it's not probable. So let me try to live in the probable and find where I have control in the probable, because everything can go wrong and everything's possible, and we see it. That's something I use for myself and for others. I don't know if that is kind of a concept you think about.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's when you're able to get your thinking brain back online, you can start to think, okay, well, is my reaction proportionate to the probability of this happening?

I love that when I get my thinking brain back online. I love that. Curious. I mean, you're a mother of a child, a young child. How was all this for you? You don't mind?

Me? No, I. I don't mind at all. Thank you. No, my. My daughter is five and a half, and I had the. The contradictory experience, the juxtaposition yesterday of carrying this and my fears for her. I, too, was going to homeschool and keep her in my pocket for the rest of her life.

But then I also had her preschool graduation yesterday. So it was really this, like, really interesting dynamic where I'm in this, like, profound kind of sadness about all kinds, you know, this event and where things are and as a mental health clinician and how we can do better. And then, you know, 20 minutes later, I'm sitting at a celebratory event for my own child. And I have to be honest, I never really got the whole young child graduation thing. I always thought it was kind of silly until it was my child. And I was sitting there, you know, sobbing, because I was so proud of her. But it was just such a. Such a conflict within me of.

Pride and gratitude for my own child and her health and that she's doing well and she's accomplished this thing. And then this profound sadness for families who are in a completely different place than I am for. For such a. For such tragic reasons. Beyond that, I think just anger. I. I was really angry. I just. My. My first thought was like, are you not? No, not again. You know, not. You know, and this is on the heels of another. Of another violent attack last. The week before in. In Buffalo, you know, and sadly, I. I also felt like, when. Why is this so normal? Why is this like, oh, another shooting, you know, and. And I got real global about it. And for me, it helps to, yes, spend some time there and think about how I can act on a bigger level, but then also come back to my corner of the world and know that that's. That's where I can hold space for my child. That's where I can hold space for myself and take care of my corner of the world. Because we do want to feel like we can have some. Some sort of control over something that feels so out of our control.

And, you know, where we started at talking about collective grief, I think that's the. That's the piece, is that these lives parallel our lives. I mean, after the shooting in the grocery store a week ago, I literally thought about it as I'm walking into my grocery store. Right. The pictures. I mean, I think the thing that just, you know, I got to make sure I don't. Well, if I go there now, I go there now. But just the pictures of the kids and it being end of school and them beginning to get their awards and, you know, just the parents waiting. I mean. I mean, oh, gosh, it's. It's just so brutal. And I think clinicians can easily feel so helpless. And, you know, the things that we put up on grief.com and I'll make sure we put them in the chat about grief after a shooting and grief in children. I mean, anyone watching, please use those, please share those, please rewrite them, personalize them for you and your practice. I want them to be shared. And I think we all have to be resources for one another at a moment like this.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Andre, we're going to probably wrap up here in just a couple minutes. Andre, did you have any more thoughts that you wanted to share or things you wanted to talk about?

I think, you know, the last thing that I would like to share is just that, you know, in these times we've been talking about how we feel so helpless and so powerless. And, you know, I think a lot of healing and, you know, being able to empower ourselves to work through this come from that dialectic that we've been talking about. There's so many dialectics here throughout this entire situation. It's such a complex situation. But 12 of the opposing truths that we can synthesize are that bad things can happen and we can be okay. And I think if we can support ourselves and our, our clients and anybody that we work with in kind of getting to that truth and, and realizing that the things that we have control over can help us to get to that truth, I think that's how we empower ourselves to heal. And. And so I don't know, I think it's very important for us to remember that dialectic as well and allow, you.

Know, I think even I. I'm so clear when it comes to this world and grief and trauma, there is no knowing at all. I think we all feel, and we're certainly under educated in terms of, you know, the training we had. So I'm so grateful for Pesi and authors like you, Andrea, and just, you know, I encourage people, if you feel insecure in your work, there's great trainings out there. Through Pesi, I have a grief educator program.

People in grief can be time intensive. We have a supplemental online group, Tender Hearts. You know, I don't turn anyone in grief away for lack of funds. I just want to make sure clinicians really bring all they can to this in terrible times. And our heart's in the right place. But the education piece was so missing in our training.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

One resource that I want to share is Andrea's book. Not for the purposes of selling anything, but I will say I said it when you submitted your proposal, Andrea. I'll say it again. It is one of the best books on kids grief that I Have evidence endorsed by David. It's so beautiful how you wrote that book. I know they've put it in the chat so that people can find it. It's called When Someone Dies. It is published by us, but that's not my purpose here. It's a wonderful resource among many that are out there. So thank you. Thank you for writing that book, Andrea. It's a beautiful book. Yeah.

Thank you. I think so.

Can't have enough of them. I mean, I think, you know, it's like, we can't keep the work that people are doing a secret. And I know none of us want to ever look like that's what this moment is about. But we do want clinicians to know there's wonderful resources out there. Like her books.

Yes, absolutely. We struggled with it yesterday. We said, you know, do we. Do we make sure it's in front of more people right now?

Is.

You know, is that. You know, and someone on our team just had a great thing. He said. He's like, we. We don't sell. We don't create snake oil. Like, this is. This is it. This is what we do at Pesi, we make resources for people who are in pain. And Andres and David has trainings with us as well, and a card deck with us. These are all wonderful resources that. That are available that we want to make sure people have. This is when we need them. This is why we do this work well.

And I think I can attest, you know, I work with a lot of different organizations, and I can attest to the fact that most organizations like Pesi are just trying to help. I've seen PESI itself donate so many resources to families in need, you know, so I think, again, you know, it's just important for people to have access and to make these resources findable for the people who need them.

I agree. I agree. In the chat where I'm seeing. I don't know if you guys can see it. I'm seeing a ton of support, a lot of agreement, a lot of gratitude for this discussion. I want to thank you both again for being here. If it's. If it's all right with the two of you and the community watching, I'd like to just take a moment of silence to honor and. And respect the community in Texas, if that's all right. Thank.

You.

Thank you, everyone, for being here. If you are able to let people know that this is out there, we will be restreaming it, reposting it, I guess. I don't know. The word is on all of the Pesi channels. David, I imagine you'll keep yours up as well. And yours and Andre as well. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Andre and David, especially, thank you for pulling this together so that we could have this really important conversation. And I wish everyone peace. And I hope we can all take care of our little corner of the world.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much for being here.