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When struggling to define what might be helpful to readers during these demanding times, some kind of information or perspective that I could uniquely provide, I ruled out advice for dealing with uncertainty or with trauma that I have already written about, mostly in the context of the pandemic, or addressed on YouTube. Might it help readers if I focused on sources of distress or on ways to cope with it? Others and I had covered this ground pretty thoroughly, including advice from the American Red Cross and the American Psychological Association.
The violence at the nation’s Capitol altered concerns about safety and uncertainty, adding images of physical danger and intentional destruction to an ongoing pandemic and toxic prejudices. The hideous sparks of brutality that ignited the Black Lives Matter movement exploded like dynamite on Jan. 6, 2021, expanding to violate rights of America's law-abiding voting citizens. At this moment, living in America no longer offers guarantees. We want to believe that in the future our votes will continue to be counted.
I examined my motives for writing. I know that “doing” something when I feel acute grief or trauma has proved helpful to me since my newborn died in 1968, days before Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, an assault that felt like a national blow. I have consciously used that “do something” behavior ever since, most recently when Notre Dame was in flames. I have also learned that reaching out to help others who struggle helps me recover my own stability and sense of agency and to eventually heal, whether through volunteer work for March of Dimes following my baby’s death, offering workshops to local organizations and corporations after 9-11, or providing mental health support following a hurricane. It is not about ego, but being able to contribute in ways that use my training and earned skills.
Once I was clear about my motive for writing this piece, the question became content. A few days beyond the initial event, I no longer needed to care for myself so intensely. Aware that the first rule for recovery is self-care (and that if I was not in decent shape, I could only provide limited help to others), I had set in gear my own arsenal of coping strategies—basics like sleep, good nutrition, exercise, allowing space for emotions to arise and be acknowledged along with considering strategies to gain a bit of distance, allowing the pain to part and make way for complexity and self-compassion. The latter let me know that what I wanted to write about was our uniqueness as we respond to what affects us deeply.
Following 9/11, the state of Connecticut held a training day for people whose work included dealing with mental health issues during and following traumatic situations. I joined firefighters, police personnel, EMTs and other first responders, as well as psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, and other psychologists at Connecticut Valley Hospital to learn the latest that was then known about trauma. Experts discussed variables and conditions that influence one’s responses to it, and ways that we might be helpful to others during times of threat or grief or great fear of what may yet come.
As part of the program, the organizers showed a film of a fire that was out of control. In debriefing following the film, I shook my head in wonder: remarks from audience participants revealed that, although we had all watched the same film footage, each of us had filtered what we witnessed through our own unique history. It was as though we had each watched a different movie. In other words, watching the trauma was affecting each individual differently depending on their prior experience.
Since 2001, the study of trauma has expanded and we have learned that our brains and nervous systems are imprinted by intense threat. The forms that imprinting takes vary depending on our ages, context, and how those in the environment that surrounds us responded at the time. As Bronfenbrenner argued, through his ecological theory of development, we are influenced by that which occurs in the world around us, increasingly broadly as we mature and our brains evolve.
A small child senses the energy of the instability through whatever forms it takes, whereas a slightly older child is more influenced by parents’ reactions and responses. Adolescents are impacted still more broadly, by their own relationships and the culture that surrounds them. When I asked my daughter how her 17-year-old was doing, she noted that her child had excellent support outside the home as well as within: “She has an awesome history teacher; he is excellent. And he is helping the kids.” My daughter also told me that her college junior had just completed a history course on Nazi Germany. The professor who had taught the course—and warned the students of the possibility of violence in the United States—reached out to offer mechanisms whereby the young adults could provide support and understanding to each other as they made their way through the rest of winter break and back into the world in which they had just voted, many in their first election.
Because we each experience a traumatic event uniquely, depending upon many factors in our own lives, but especially our own previous exposure, the research literature brings us contrasting perceptions regarding resilience following grief or recovery following trauma. Only an estimated 15% (or less) of those who suffer the death of someone who was close to them develop a complicated grief disorder, nor do all those exposed to trauma suffer PTSD, even when they have been exposed to the same horror. Data thus have varied widely on how much of the population is “resilient,” affected minimally by distress, and set to pop back up quickly without serious anxiety or depression or other symptoms like flashbacks or an exaggerated startle or avoidance response. But many people do, indeed, process challenge relatively well.
When I taught Psychological First Aid for the American Red Cross, I sometimes had seasoned volunteers who had managed to continue to function smoothly, in spite of the most horrific accident or weather event or explosion, and to retain a sense of supportive compassion. They had strengthened their capacity to cope and part of their gratitude was expressed in helping others who suffered.
As I have made my way through life challenges, I discovered that once I myself was sound and stable, helping others was an excellent way to use both my training and the lessons learned through living my own life. This brings us full circle. Today I offer you three conclusions:
1. To (once again) adapt a quote from psychologist Henry Murray, “All people are in some ways like all other people, in some ways like some other people, and in some ways like no other people.” In times of trauma, grief, or severe stress, while the wiring may be near-universal, the way in which it is affected by experience is unique.
2. People often withdraw from others if they believe their responses deviate significantly from what they see around them. An unnecessary sense of shame arises, as they feel hunger after hours of being glued to screens or guilt when they want to take a break from the intensity of the experience and get some exercise or seek out a diverting television show. They may wonder, “What’s wrong with me that I am (or am not) reacting like those around me?”
3. Each person’s path to recovery—especially what helps and what harms the process—is also unique. Whereas we have massive data that social support can be helpful in stressful situations, even that reality may not be true in a specific case following a challenging event. Some may go into shock, some into action (impulsive and ill-advised or trained and helpful). There are people whose return to resilience requires them to stabilize their own cognitive, emotional and physical systems first, before they can reach out to others, receive from them, or even feel safe in sharing. The Swedish proverb, “Sharing doubles joy and halves grief,” has its exceptions.
Observe your own reactions, try a range of responses, and develop your own protocol for how to recover from the unexpected and suddenly unpredictable. My go-to reactions of doing something to gain some distance (making dinner, writing, baking, a long walk) combined with sleep and other self-care, followed by reaching out to help others who might be able to benefit by something I have to give, has served me well. It is not for everyone. Discover your own plan or program for recovery. (Here is one of my favorites when faced with serious stress.) If you find yourself using negative coping or unable to create strategies, do seek professional help.
Copyright 2021 Roni Beth Tower.
References
Harrington, Rick. (2013). Stress, health & well-being: thriving in the 21st century. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1111831615. OCLC 781848419.
Edwards J.R., Cooper C.L. (2013) The Impacts of Positive Psychological States on Physical Health: A Review and Theoretical Framework. In: Cooper C.L. (eds) From Stress to Wellbeing Volume 1. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137310651_4
Vella SL, Pai NB. A theoretical review of psychological resilience: Defining resilience and resilience research over the decades. Arch Med Health Sci 2019;7:233-9.
