There Is No Change Without Loss, No Loss Without Change
The sky is red. You can’t get away. From the moment you turn on your phone, you see faces of people whose day started off much like yours, with an expectation of going from point A to point B, to lunch, to point C, and then back home. But something happened. Someone drove a truck into a crowd. A bomb went off at a concert. Somebody got shot or got hit by a bus. A tornado touched down. Or maybe there was a seven-car pileup on the highway. Within seconds, life as usual got blown away.
It’s in our faces and on our screens. Streaming images stab at us. We swipe them away. And so it goes, until it happens to you or someone you know and love.
Say it’s early in the morning; you’re drinking your coffee, and you swipe or click to make those upsetting faces go away. There is always last night’s scores or today’s cat video to distract you. Why get upset if you haven’t had your breakfast yet?
It is human nature to move away from pain and toward pleasure. Thanks to the miracle of instant digital access, you can eliminate anything that reeks of unpleasantness in less than a second—however, this may reinforce an unrealistic assumption that when something painful happens you should be able to make it go away right now. If you can’t, there must be something wrong with you. You must not be visualizing what you want to attract. Or you have “negative beliefs.” Or perhaps you believe that God is punishing you.
It’s Reality. Not Reality TV.
Practice in the art of swiping away whatever we don’t want to face leaves us ill-prepared to face tragic events in our own lives. Not only does looking away make it harder for us to cope with our own emotional needs, it also leaves us with a deficit in compassion for others and ourselves when reality turns out to be a lot different from reality TV.
The unrealistic belief that we are somehow entitled to go through life unmoved by other people’s suffering further limits our ability to cope with our own. Our capacity to disregard and discount viscerally painful experiences is so ingrained that we have come to believe that “moving forward” means not allowing ourselves to be moved at all.
Even first responders and military personnel can be deeply affected by what they see, smell, and hear on the job. It doesn’t make them less effective. Nor do they consider themselves weak. It takes guts to wake up every day knowing you will be walking a knife’s edge between life and death. As civilians, we can help ourselves become stronger in adversity by modeling some first responders’ mindsets and coping strategies.
The Help Cycle Lasts Three Months
Forgetting what happened is not an option. It can take years before you stop thinking about it as soon as you wake up and throughout the day. That’s right—years. After the initial rush of sending money to the American Red Cross, our collective attention wanders. Once the cameras leave, we tend to think that anyone affected should be “over it already.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dr. Thomas Demaria is a psychologist specializing in trauma. He is the director of the Psychological Services Center in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Long Island University’s CW Post Campus. Dr. Demaria has consulted on more than 200 catastrophic events, including the Sandy Hook school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Hurricane Sandy; the 2008 earthquake in Haiti; the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and 2001; and Hurricane Katrina.
“For the first three months, people want to donate time and money,” he says. “Then they want to hear that the people who were traumatized are ‘moving forward.’ The hurt lasts longer than the public expects.”
As a therapist specializing in helping people whose lives have been impacted by catastrophic events, I frequently hear that a few days, a few weeks, or maybe several months after a critical event, a survivor, loved one or eyewitness starts to get shamed and blamed for not “being over it.” Messages from his or her partner, mother, best friend, or coworker frequently go something like this: “What’s wrong with you? You’re still dwelling on this. You should get over it. You need to go out more. Why don’t you join Match.com? You should smile more. Why don’t you go shopping?”
A Price for Everything
There is a price for forgetting and for remembering. Forgetting as a form of escape deprives us of what the Five Gifts can offer—humility, patience, empathy, forgiveness, and growth.
Remembering in the form of flashbacks, second-guessing, and the head game called “could’a-should’a-would’a” comes with a heavy emotional price—remaining frozen in the initial stages of shock, hurt, and rage. You won’t find the Five Gifts on anyone’s wish list, but when your emotional tank is on empty, they will be there to help you replenish your energy.
The long and winding road to that place where we come to terms with our losses and begin to build our new sense of self demands that we give ourselves all the time we need to process the unthinkable, with compassion for ourselves and others. We need to unlearn the habits of impatience and take stock of those beliefs about life that no longer hold true.
Contrary to current mythology, everything does not happen for a reason that we can grasp. Some things are beyond human understanding. This doesn’t jibe with our “Just Do It” mindset, but humility—the first gift—can help us surrender to an event outside our control, one we couldn’t prevent and was not our fault.
Stop Trying to Fix It—or Him or Her or Yourself
Most of the people who have come forward to share their experiences in these pages have been to hell and back. I cannot thank them enough for the courage and raw honesty they are willing to offer so that our journeys can be less excruciating.
When someone we know is hurting, it’s our instinct to want them to get better—first, for themselves, and also because our inability to assist leaves us feeling helpless. What happened to him or her could happen to any of us at any time. There is no such thing as “it can’t happen here.”
When somebody is emotionally injured in an unexpected and tragic event, that does not make him or her less of a person any more than our own vulnerability makes us “less than.” It makes us “greater than.”
No Timetable for Healing
I have never met anyone who decided that three weeks from today at 2:37 pm she would be “over it” and made it happen exactly like that. It’s impossible to predict how the heart heals or how long it is going to take. Humility helps us come to terms with what we cannot know. Patience takes the edge off when the hurt continues.
Empathy is the gift that connects us with others. Although we might want to isolate, we need empathy during cycles of instability and loss, such as during war, epidemic, gas shortages, or seasons of drought and wildfires.
It’s not uncommon to default to feeling like a failure when you are unable to will yourself to make the pain go away. Although you may be too shattered for a while to go to work or socialize or be a productive member of society, living with acute stress does not mean you have failed. Like breaking a leg, a serious injury to the psyche often gets us benched while the regular game of life goes on. It may seem strange that forgiving ourselves for having such perfectly human reactions is harder than forgiving whatever caused them.
The essence of the Five Gifts is elegantly expressed in this quote from Pope John Paul II: “See everything. Overlook a great deal. Improve a little.”
Forgiveness Helps Us Let Go
Many of us feel “damaged” because we cannot fight off debilitating waves of emotion. “I don’t know why I wake up worrying in the middle of the night,” a woman who lost her home in a fire recently told me. Within the previous two years, she had also survived sexual assault, divorce, losing her job, and moving out of state.
“It feels like I was hit by a giant wave,” she said. As we reviewed the events she had endured in a relatively short time, her responses made sense to her. Given the circumstances, they were normal and very human.
Finally, the gift of growth allows us to look back on those very painful events and say, “I never wanted to go through that nor would I wish it on someone else. But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have become the person I am today. And for that, I am grateful.”
Three Cycles of Loss
Finding our balance in the aftermath of a big hit can be complicated by cycles of loss, which are rarely addressed. But recognizing what they are and how they affect us can protect us from slipping into depression and loss of self-worth.
The three cycles of loss center on our sense of control, safety, and identity.
1) Loss of control, especially loss of control over physical symptoms.
In the wake of disaster, symptoms that include loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, gastrointestinal pain, and headaches can become unsettling. Most of the time, they resolve on their own, but the key gift here is patience and paying attention to our basic needs—for food, water, and rest. If the discomfort continues, it is time to seek medical help. Conventional and homeopathic medication, as well as nutritional supplements, can alleviate psychogenic symptoms, such as headaches and insomnia.
A couple of years after Rachelle Quiyara survived a shoot-out on a New York City bus, she was having so much trouble sleeping that she was unable to function at work.
“I tried antianxiety medication but I couldn’t tolerate the side effects,” she says. “I created small comfort zones for myself, and whenever possible, my boyfriend and I took a drive. It felt calming to be around water.”
2) Loss of safety and an increase in vulnerability.
If anxiety is “the disease of the what-if’s,” imagining a plethora of life-threatening events can only serve to intensify anxiety. Eighteen months after she was hit by a bus while crossing the street, Margaret Sugarman became unable to leave her house.
“I can’t stop thinking that something horrible is going to happen again,” she told me. “It’s better if I just stay inside.”
Margaret, who was blind, considered suicide because she felt too fragile to continue. As she came to understand that experiencing extreme vulnerability was a natural part of the healing process, she regained confidence in her ability to navigate outdoors.
“I thought there was something wrong with me,” she said.
After I explained that anyone, sighted or blind, would be frightened after such an accident, she was able to stop blaming herself for being weak. Like Margaret, those who pride themselves on being self-reliant and independent often report that reframing their shame about feeling vulnerable in response to a loss of safety stops the spiral of negativity and helps them to reclaim their self-worth.
3) Loss of identity.
When life as we knew it gets ripped away and our ability to concentrate is impaired for months or years at a time, we can begin to question our identity. We find ourselves plagued by questions: Who am I, if I’m not a spouse? Or parent? Who am I if I can’t work and take care of my family or balance my checkbook? What happened to the strong, independent person I used to be? Questioning our identity is an unsettling experience but it can open the way for a new appreciation for core strengths that no one can take away from us.
After one of my friends lost his restaurant in a fire, he discovered that what hurt the most was the loss of his professional identity. Multiple problems getting an insurance settlement and delays with building permits held up construction for more than a year.
“The restaurant was a neighborhood landmark. It bore my name and my sense of self, and pride in my work was a big part of who I was,” he told me. “Then it dawned on me that I am not a place of business and my self-worth does not depend on my kitchen equipment. I realized that what I believe in is far more important. I’m loyal to those who matter and I value speaking the truth. That’s who I am, and nothing, not even that fire, can take that away.”
# Disturbing Trends
When I started working on this book full time, research in several fields of study showed potential future trends with regard to mass fatality events—natural, environmental, and intentional (human to human). But with each chapter, a surge in breaking news made evident the facts that climate change and random acts of violence are increasing in frequency and intensity. I can’t help thinking that this surge in man-made and intentional disasters reflects a dangerous change in the emotional climate in our society.
The projected trends are no longer predictions.
The future is here.
If you are one of those millions of people who have been—or will be—directly affected by these trends, this book could well become your lifeline to emotional recovery.
As this book went to press, the Washington Post reported that “natural disasters caused $306 billion in US damage in 2017, the largest amount for one year.” The hurricane trifecta—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—in combination with wildfires and various other natural disasters made 2017 the most expensive year since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started keeping records in 1980. Hurricane Harvey topped the list with $125 billion in damages, second only to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which resulted in $215 billion in damages.1
Okay, the numbers are frightening and depressing. We can stick our heads under the covers and refuse to come out. We can let fear and anger drive our personalities or we can channel the positive power of anger into healthy activism. With humility, patience, empathy, forgiveness, and growth, we can share necessary information about how to survive and take care of ourselves and each other, during and after a disaster. We can educate ourselves about the growing, real threat that environmental damage poses to our safety, health, and longevity. With the Five Gifts, we can solve our problems without shooting each other.
We have a lot of work to do. We could probably start a movement called #disturbingtrends and reach more people than we realize have a need to be part of a community like this.
Meanwhile, the Five Gifts can help us stay grounded when life as we knew it gets turned upside down and inside out.
Finding Hope
Two years after 9/11, I signed on to run an adolescent bereavement program at South Nassau Community Hospital’s World Trade Center Family Center in Rockville Centre on Long Island. As a single mom who had survived raising a teenager, I knew reaching these kids would not be easy. Dr. Demaria, the program’s executive director, told me that three experts in adolescent bereavement had already struck out. As I recall, he tried to set realistic expectations about my prospects for success. Unlike adults who had lost a loved one on 9/11, teenagers were not going to sit in a circle and share their feelings in a group. Nor would they be willing to paint, draw, or write letters to God, like the nine-year-old daughter of a New York City fireman, whose letter was posted near the counseling center’s front door:
“Dear God,” she had written. “Please give the people who hurt us a heart.”
Finding a way to connect with thirty teens and young adults who did not want to be singled out as “9/11 kids” was challenging. Their moms described them as “shut down.” They did not want to talk about anything related to September 11th and they were probably not going to show up at any events at the Family Center.
To my surprise, the keys to their opening up would be found at Yankee and Shea Stadiums. My indefatigable supervisor, Dr. Minna Barrett, who had logged months of service at Ground Zero, urged me to reach out to the NY Yankees and the NY Mets. I had never been a baseball fan, but Rocky Halsey of the New York Yankees community relations team arranged for the kids to attend batting practice and meet Yankees’ manager Joe Torre. My brother Eric, the Voice of the Texas Rangers, got special permission for me to bring the kids to the press box when the Rangers were in town, as the Yankee Stadium press box is normally off-limits to visitors. He also asked the Mets’ general manager, Omar Minaya, to organize a day when 9/11 families could meet the players and watch the game.
We spent three baseball seasons together. Despite their initial dislike for the group bus nicknamed “The 9/11-mobile,” the kids shared memories of going to games with their dads. They missed their fathers on Opening Day and remembered the Father’s Day games when their favorite team won. Organically, the younger boys and girls confided to the older kids that they missed their fathers coming home from work to practice batting with them before dinner. A sixteen-year-old who had been quiet for nearly two years opened up about how his father had gone to work early that Tuesday just so that he would be home in time for Little League that night.
“It’s hard because I’m different from my friends,” he said. “I know that what you love can be taken away from you in an instant. So whatever you do, you have to seize the day and make it yours.”
On the bus home from Yankee Stadium, a few of the older boys came over to talk about an idea they had developed among themselves. After sitting with the younger kids and listening to them talk about their fathers teaching them to play, my older kids were eager to start coaching and mentoring the little ones. This was the gift of empathy in action.6
Having disconnected emotionally to protect themselves from feeling helpless and scared, they found that they could reach each other through their shared love of baseball.
“That program made a huge difference to me,” one of the young men told me recently. “Before, I was a wreck. I was really angry and I didn’t know how I could go on. That helped me turn the corner because it showed me that 9/11 wasn’t an end. It was a beginning.”
As it says in After the Fall: The Rise of a 9/11 Community Center, a documentary film about this work we all did together, “There is no magic formula for healing the pain. Indescribable damage to the landscape of the heart and mind will forever remain invisible. The pioneers built their communities so that they could stand united against adversities. It is our American tradition to come together in times of tragedy. This is how we grow as a people and as a nation.”7
Keys for Getting Ready to Stay Steady
“If I do (x) with (y) at (z), will it”:
A. Give me energy
B. Help me conserve my energy
C. Drain my energy.
Put Answer (C) on your Not-to-do list.
Be ruthlessly honest with yourself. If the answer is “C, drain my energy,” please move that item from your “To Do” list to your “Not to Do” list. Estimate how much time you would have spent doing this task. Give that time to yourself. Now that this question is no longer on your “To Do” list, give yourself that half-hour or hour as a gift for something enjoyable and relaxing.