Disaster Recovery and Hope

hey i’m brooke

i’m a traumatologist which really just

means i’m super into disasters

i’ve studied and treated disasters and

trauma my whole career so you would

think that during a pandemic

one person who might be able to manage

the fallout for herself and her family

would be the person who studies

disasters right

but my family and i were in the middle

of a research semester in belize when

the pandemic broke out and we had about

a 40 hour notice from the state

department to pack everything up and

come home

so no goodbyes no seasonal appropriate

clothing for my kids

we had to travel home through three

airports with babies who were

licking the back of the airplane seat

leather and by the time we got home

i would say by day two of shelter in

place

i was drinking beer at noon and making

two can-shaped

pancakes for my kids who missed the

belize pancake guy

and frantically subscribing to disney

plus just so that i could run my

counseling practice

normal i mean bird pancakes beer at noon

on a tuesday not normal

normal in disaster totally normal

like most people i’ve spent the last

several months trying to find a whole

new way to work with all these other

people who live in my house

and run a home-based preschool and try

not to bring home a deadly disease on my

groceries

it’s been a little chaotic and it’s not

just me

everybody i’ve talked to has asked why

is this so hard

why do i feel so lazy so tired

so anxious so depressed and should i

even feel this way

i mean i’m not sick my family’s safe i’m

not on the front lines

can what i’m going through really be

considered traumatic or traumatic stress

so today i’d like to answer some of

those questions and i’m hoping that by

the end of our time together

we’ll walk away understanding why our

stress response to this pandemic is

normal

that we’re probably going to be okay

when this is over with no lasting

traumatic stress

and we might even see a little bit of

emotional growth on the other side of

this

so first things first you’re normal i’m

normal however you’re feeling whatever

it looks like

in disaster times it’s normal one of my

favorite quotes by a psychologist who

studied which people survived in

concentration camps was

an abnormal response to an abnormal

situation

is normal behavior anything goes right

now

disasters have stages and this stage

that we’ve just been in this stage that

some of us are still in

is stay alive luckily our brain’s exact

purpose is to do just that to keep us

alive

so we have three parts of our brain that

work together to protect us we have

the thinking brain that’s all of our

reasoning our logic

our thought we have our emotional brain

which is our feelings

our gut reactions and then we have the

reptile brain which is basic body

function

so heart rate breathing body temperature

when life is good and safe our thinking

brain is in control and these other two

parts are just kind of in the background

doing their thing quietly

but when there’s a threat the thinking

brain moves aside

these other two parts kind of jump to

the forefront and we go through all

these physiological and

hormonal changes that make us able to

respond to danger

in its most extreme state we would

recognize this as the fight flight or

freeze response

so as we’re in the middle of this slow

motion disaster with a tagline of

safer at home implying what that

we’re not safe outside our home or we

might be safe but someone we love might

be in danger

or we might be the asymptomatic one who

passes along a deadly disease to someone

we love

so really you know this is game day for

the parts of our brain that exist to

protect us from danger and our brains

are just doing the exact thing they’ve

been wired to do

and that’s to protect us with hyper

vigilance

black and white thinking energy

conservation

so why am i so tired why do i feel lazy

why am i anxious or keyed up why can’t i

sleep why do i only want to eat carbs

because our brains are in survival mode

because we’ve been fighting this

low-key low-grade threat for

70-something days

and half of you became teachers during

this

the other thing we know is that as we

move throughout life our memories are

stored with several things attached

so we have a snapshot image of the

experience

we have an emotion about the experience

we have a body sensation so a taste or a

smell or a gut feeling

and then way deep down we have a belief

about ourselves and about the world

according to that experience and then

those

memories are filed away by associations

so things that look like this

are over here things that feel like this

are over here things that smell like

this are over here

and those associations are connected by

these quick

neural pathways that act like road maps

and that connect

are present to our past so

in present day quicker than our thinking

brain even realizes what’s happening

when we experience something our

emotional brain has already

pulled the file of all the other things

that looked like this or

felt like this or smelled like this

before and it informs and predicts our

behavior

our response now it’s meant to be

protective it’s automatic

so this dread this panic

this fear it feels a lot like that other

time in life when fill in the blank

for nicole why is this so heavy oh it’s

the exact message of my home growing up

you are not safe

for carissa i’m stuck i’m trapped i

can’t go to target why am i so mad that

i can’t go to target

just like i was trapped in my home for

16 years with abuse it’s not target

it’s the feeling of being trapped for

marla

man i haven’t felt this way since my dad

died what’s going on and then she

remembered the last time she closed down

her small business

loaded up her family in her car and left

town was for her dad’s funeral

so marla’s carrying kovid plus the grief

of losing her dad

and here’s the kicker the root of most

trauma is

immobilization feeling stuck

lack of personal agency and the feeling

that this is going to last

forever so these are the messages people

are reconnecting with right now

i’m not safe the world is not safe

i’m not in charge of my own body i’m

powerless

there’s no end in sight i mean that’s

this

and we haven’t even gotten to the losses

yet besides

all the losses we can see empty

playgrounds empty storefronts we have

the loss of routine the loss of touch

the loss of gathering together and we

have the loss of our most

powerful protection against traumatic

stress and that’s

social support our brains have been

wired to rely on each other since birth

it’s literally how we survived as

infants

so here we are in this worldwide

pandemic and our best

most research vetted biological way to

cope

is off the table in all the ways we’ve

previously accessed it because it’s

dangerous to be around other people

so if it feels heavy it’s because it’s

actually grief but we don’t want to use

that word i mean i’m not going to go

that far i can’t say that word for

myself

i’m not sick i’m safe my family is safe

i can’t be sad that my time in belize

was cut short

i can’t be upset that my residency was

cancelled or my 40th birthday party or

my kids little league season people are

suffering and dying

renee brown calls this comparative

suffering and it’s this evaluating and

then

ranking our our pain on a suffering

board

and then denying or rejecting our

feelings because they don’t score high

enough on the suffering board

like i’m sorry payne but here’s the

suffering threshold and you only come up

to here

so then we reject those feelings and

they just go away right

no they grow roots they get deeper and

stronger

and then guess what shows up shame

because now not only do we have all

these feelings we wish we didn’t have

we feel like a bad person for having

them in the first place

and we can’t tell anybody about it and

so we’re just alone in it

so let me recap where a good portion of

the world is living right now

we’re carrying around this cumulative

low-grade

functional stress about a threat that’s

real

plus the physiological and emotional

muscle memory of all the other things

that felt like this before

we can’t use social support in the same

way and we have a ton of grief that

we’re not quite sure is allowed

so have i convinced you yet that it’s

acceptable to just go ahead and lose

your mind i mean let go it’s fine

because now i want to walk you back out

of the chaos

good news we know that about 80 percent

of americans will be exposed to some

type of a traumatic event in their life

and of that eighty percent in cases not

involving human cruelty we know that

only nine percent will go on to develop

ptsd

so odds are in the context of this

pandemic

91 of us are going to be okay but how

can we be sure we’re in that 91

i spent a couple of months in rwanda a

few years ago now there’s a

post-disaster community

they had this horrific interpersonal

trauma a genocide where

a million people were killed in 100 days

and i don’t know

what i thought i would find when i went

there but i could not conceptualize how

people could just move forward after

something like that like i couldn’t

picture what it would look like

but i got there and people were eating

and they were working

and kids were playing and going to

school bikers were biking choirs were

singing

and everybody kept asking brooke how do

you find our country

and i found it to be the exact picture

of resilience like if i were gonna take

a picture of somehow humans survive

it would be a picture of rwanda in march

and then april came around and april’s

the anniversary of the genocide and the

whole country shuts down for a national

mourning and banners and billboards go

up that say

genocide against the tutsi those exact

words no sugar coating it

and for the first week businesses are

closed schools are closed there’s no

music and any public places all the tvs

are off

and you start to see microphones and

podiums and chairs going up in all these

public spaces

so that survivors can share the story of

their experience

and other people could witness it and

then for the rest of the hundred days

they go out and physically care for the

survivors so they’re rehabilitating

homes they’re farming the land

they’re visiting the memorials they’re

actively participating in this

collective

remembering naming grieving of the

trauma

and bearing witness to each other’s pain

and april is really hard it’s triggering

um there are flashbacks

teenagers are moody adults have

overwhelming grief

but at least the people we were with

shared with us that that during that

time it’s set aside

for collective grief it allows them to

just let everything out

to feel it honestly without shame

together and that it helps them function

better the other parts of the year

knowing that this time is set aside for

this collective grief

so obviously we’re not rwanda and we’re

not dealing with

you know the aftermath of a genocide but

we do have a long history of

racial inequality and trauma that this

pandemic

has both like compounded and highlighted

so we know that it’s important in the

process of recovery

to name our losses and then to give

ourselves permission to feel pain

it’s okay to offer ourselves empathy and

to offer empathy to people around us

because empathy is not finite it’s not a

zero-sum game

where if i reserve some for myself i

have less to give to

the front-line workers or my friend who

got furloughed or survivors in rwanda

but if i offer myself empathy and

empathy to people around me we put even

more empathy into the world

the next thing we have to do is change

the way we think of social support as

just being in the presence of each other

have you heard the story of the long

spoons

there’s a guy who’s being ushered into

the gates of hell and he gets into this

dining hall and there are rows of tables

heaping piles of delicious food

but everybody’s moaning and starving and

as he gets closer he realizes they have

spoons

but the spoons are too long to get any

food into their mouths

then he goes into the next dining hall

which is heaven same rows of tables

same heaping piles of food but they’re

using their spoons to feed the person

across the table from them

that’s social support it’s not enough to

just be together

but i’m going to witness your pain and

you’re going to witness mine

i’m going to feed you and you’re going

to feed me and that’s our most powerful

protection

against stress and trauma one other

protective measure is the ability to

name

meaning or goodness as we’re on the

journey through suffering so in the same

way we can name our pain

and give ourselves permission to feel it

we can also

name the good things and the meaningful

things and give ourselves permission to

feel joy

it doesn’t mean the loss or degree for

the pain is meaningful but it means that

we can find it

while we’re in the middle of it so we’ve

talked about why our response is normal

we’ve talked about

the likelihood that we’re all going to

be okay now it’s time to actually talk

about the growth

so you can see in this disaster graph on

the left hand side

this person is starting out at a

baseline of like this level of um

emotional functioning and then the event

happens it’s that red dot we’re shocked

we’re confused we don’t know what’s

happening

and we see this quick emotional rise to

like gratitude altruism hope we’re

clapping for our nurses at 8 p.m

and then we have the true nose dive of

disaster we’re tired we’re weary

we’re like when is this ever going to

end grief sets in stress that’s in

we’re getting angry we’re blaming each

other and then at some point we do

actually start

the climb back up to a new normal we’re

accepting the new normal we’re

integrating into our lives and we end or

this person the graph ends at just a

little bit higher level of

emotional functioning than when they

first started and we call that

post-traumatic growth it’s not growth

that happens in spite of the event had

this event not happened we would have

still been sitting here at baseline

but it’s growth that happens because of

the event because of the things we learn

about ourselves and other people along

all these ups and downs

what does this look like in real life

when i was in rwanda i saw people who

had been so previously divided

along these tribal lines that they were

literally killing each other

now living and working with intentional

peace

offering forgiveness offering mercy

trying to know each other in these new

ways with these new identities

when i was at one of the memorials there

was a sign outside that said if you knew

me

and you really knew yourself you would

not have killed me

and this is their growth in that way

that despite

overwhelming grief caused by the people

they’re now seeking out peaceful living

they’re they’re committed to knowing

each other with these new identities

offering forgiveness in a way i can’t

even comprehend

one other thing to remember about growth

is that in the same way

our bodies pull the automatic response

to suffering we can also pull the file

of survival

somehow we survived that other thing and

we’re going to survive this one because

we have the muscle memory of survival

but we also have the perspective of all

the life lived between that time of the

original suffering

and now so we can suffer better with

more resources

more perspective more purpose so if we

can remember that a response to this

pandemic is normal and let ourselves off

the hook for that whatever it looks like

however it feels

if we can name our our losses allow

ourselves permission

to feel pain give ourselves empathy if

we can find meaning

and goodness in the middle of it and if

we can remember our survival stories

then

we’re probably going to be okay and we

might even be better than okay

and we might actually grow thank you