The First Anniversary:
There Are Good Days and Bad Days,
and Today Is One of Them
Heading into any one-year anniversary, our emotional climate shifts. We enter a new season of the heart. Instead of waking up shocked, depressed, or terrified, we can sense that our emotional baseline is evening out. It’s not that we feel “better.” It’s more that living through a nightmare has seasoned us. Bruised and confused, but managing, we have become wounded survivors putting one foot in front of the other.
The first gift— humility
—helps us appreciate that after all we’ve been through, we are still alive.
Be it newsworthy or deeply personal, the first anniversary honors those we have lost and those family members, friends, and neighbors who have been there to help us. Pausing, with gravitas, we can take a deep breath and review what we have learned. Whether we set aside personal time to reflect or attend a public ceremony, the anniversary of the year that everything changed has now become time stamped in our psyche.
Don’t be surprised by a sudden, unexpected wave of sadness the morning after. The recognition that our losses are permanent can trigger new surges of anger as well, and this new season of the heart may be stormy and unpredictable.
When Grieving Begins
Just when we thought we were getting over it, we find ourselves vulnerable to recurring STUGS: Sudden Temporary Upheavals of Grief.
The Second gift— patience
—helps us deal with not knowing how long this is going to last.
For example, after Hurricane Katrina, “Some people didn’t begin to grieve until after the first year,” says Dr. Redelfs, who remembers that New Orleans residents “were pretty much in shock at first, taking care of mundane things, such as insurance, FEMA applications, and loans, as well as finding family members and friends. We focused on the day-to-day tasks at hand. It was only when things started falling into place during the second year after Katrina that many people became aware that they were grief-stricken, furious, or bewildered. Some suddenly didn’t know what to do with their lives.”
The one-year anniversary reminds us that the damage has penetrated more deeply than we realized. It starts to sink in that our “before” way of life is not coming back. Even if we are back in our homes, we do not yet feel comfortable about being there.
Speaking on NPR’s Here and Now on the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, a Long Beach resident put it this way: “First, it’s that initial shock, and now it’s the realization that we’re a year later—this isn’t the neighborhood that I bought into; it’s not the community that I bought into. A lot of my neighbors are not coming back, the stores are not coming back, my little local library didn’t come back. So we talk about it, like we are fighting so hard to come back, and what are we coming back to?”30
Insensitivity Hurts
The Third gift— empathy
—is the antidote to insensitivity.
Loss is not a popular topic of conversation. Most of us fear it and will do anything to avoid it.
“People normally try to avoid facing hardships,” says Dr. Demaria. “A lot of people then don’t have the capacity to practice those skills to get past future challenges in their lives and subsequently need to be reminded that they have the capacity to cope.”
Now more than ever, people need support. Many who first sought counseling four years after Sandy were struggling to make sense of where they found themselves.
“I just moved back to my house but nothing is the same,” several clients reported. “I’m fortunate that I was able to rebuild but something is missing.”
Helping individuals figure out what that is and guiding them through the confusion has become an integral aspect of my post-disaster work. Dr. Demaria’s work at the WTC Family Center created a long-term model for healing from disaster. Those who lost someone on September 11th developed lifelong friendships based on patient understanding for whatever each one was experiencing.
No one was judged for not “getting over it” a year after the terrorist attack.
“We were at a picnic in a state park where a woman we didn’t know asked what group we belonged to. ‘You look so happy to be together. Is this a club?’ ” recalls Margie Miller. “We laughed. ‘Yeah, in a way, you could call us a club.’ But it’s not the kind of club anyone wants to join.”
Whether we recognize the need for it or not, empathy connects us to another person’s experience without judgment. It never fails to surprise me how difficult it can be to find it. Even people who we trusted to be supportive can hurl javelins of insensitivity when we least expect it.
One widow who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attack was told that she wasn’t smiling enough and needed to go on Match.com to feel better. A woman who lost everything she owned in Hurricane Sandy was attending a relative’s bridal shower in Connecticut a few months after the December 4, 2012, Sandy Hook school shooting, in which twenty-seven people were killed, including Adam Lanza, the shooter, and his mother.
The woman who survived Hurricane Sandy says, “I hadn’t said anything about my own situation. A relative told someone that I was a Sandy survivor. That person attacked me, saying, ‘There are plenty of parents in Newtown, Connecticut, who wished they could have those problems instead.’ ”
Insensitive remarks like these are not uncommon. People who are recovering from disasters are often told not to feel upset because, after all, what they are going through isn’t Auschwitz. Such verbal abuse is offensive and unacceptable. It adds a layer of trauma that no one needs.
Holocaust survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, spoke out against this bizarre type of shaming. He said, “Never compare suffering. Everyone has their own Auschwitz.”31
It happens more frequently than we would expect.
“It is pretty common among people who believe their emotional pain is not really justified to blame others who express that they are feeling hurt,” says Dr. Demaria. “If you are angry at people who have been victimized like you, it just means that you haven’t sorted out your own baggage or addressed your open wounds.”
The Fourth gift— forgiveness
—helps us release anger towards those who hurt us.
Those who blame the victim have not worked through their own issues from earlier trauma, according to Dr. Redelfs. “When people have received insensitivity from others, this is what they pass on instead of considering what each person needs and how can I help him or her?”
She tells survivors that “We need to understand that these people who are so insensitive have their own PTSD. They are passing onto others what was passed on to them. They have evacuated from that part of themselves that is compassionate because of what they’ve been through themselves.”
The Myth of Closure
After listening to people say, “Aren’t you over it yet?” another layer of meaning starts to sink in: Complex traumatic grief is socially uncool.
“People have a hard time with open wounds,” says Dr. Demaria.
Or perhaps we remind others that what happened to us could happen to them. Just as we were helpless to prevent what happened, others recognize they could be rendered similarly helpless by a critical event. No one enjoys feeling helpless, but without awareness, shifting blame can be a reflexive response. Sandwiched between needing to express what we are feeling and fear of being judged, we tend to pull back, shut down, and isolate to protect ourselves from being stigmatized for not being “over it” quickly enough to please someone else.
As for “closure,” it’s a myth. Paradoxically, we need to stay open to what our hearts are telling us if we are going to work through the pain.
“Losing my dad on 9/11 made me grow up immediately. Then I saw that the world changed for everybody, but I ignored my grief and it made me a very angry person,” says Ian Grady, who was nineteen at the time of the attacks. “It was ruining my relationships and my friendships. It’s important to use your grief as motivation, but also confront it. If you won’t deal with it, it will resurface.”
The Art of Grieving
Getting angry at ourselves for “not getting over it by now” amounts to shaming ourselves for feeling hurt. Like a Chinese finger puzzle made of woven straw, finding relief requires us to relax rather than pull in order to gain release. It may not make sense at first, but this paradoxical practice can lead us to a place where we are no longer fighting with ourselves about our true feelings.
“We all have trauma at one time or another,” says Dr. Redelfs. “By encouraging feelings and listening to the deeper soul messages in each communication, we can help wounded people work through their intense emotions. Everyone’s healing timeline is different. No matter how long after the event grief surfaces, it should be encouraged. People repeatedly need support to talk about all their feelings instead of retreating from them.”
It’s equally important to understand that the signature stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are not sequential. Before her death, grief pioneer Elizabeth Kübler-Ross confessed to a colleague that she regretted identifying these stages without explaining that the process is not linear. We can become flooded when several of these emotional states occur simultaneously.
As difficult as it is to stay present and let these feeling wash through us, by focusing on the gifts of humility and patience, our pain will eventually peak and subside. The best antidotes are taking breaks throughout the day to nap, walk, exercise, or spend time in nature. There is nothing we can do to force the process, and we need to be gentle with ourselves when we hurt. Retreating into drugs or alcohol puts our mental, emotional, and physical health at risk.
No “New Normal”
In our search for stability in the strange new terrain in which we wander, it’s not uncommon to reach for a label like “the new normal.” It’s easy to grab onto, and on the surface, it seems to fill in a few blanks. But there is no “new normal” because becoming habituated to severe pain is neither “normal” nor healthy.
The “old normal” was an illusion that catastrophe shattered. No matter how attached we were to the belief that our lives were predictable and under our control, any sudden, violent event provides us with an incontrovertible counterexample.
We can plan our work and work our plan; however, being organized and methodical will not protect us from the unexpected.
Moving Forward
The Fifth gift— growth
—lets us release harsh emotions we no longer need.
When life, our greatest teacher, brings change of the unexpected type, holding on to beliefs that life “should” go back to what it used to be only makes it harder to get through each day. Moving forward requires us to reframe our basic assumptions about life.
But moving forward does not mean that we heal in a linear, sequential way. Just as recovering from a physical illness can mean one step forward, two steps back (and three sideward), getting stronger after a devastating loss can be an uneven process.
“Think of it like an emotional bowel movement,” says Dr. Redelfs. “Just as we do physiologically, emotional toxicity is best released daily. We have to regularly release old feelings and disturbing thoughts that are holding us back.”
A Psychological Roadmap
Understanding that there are cycles of hardship and healing can serve as a psychological roadmap to help us find our way through the landscape of loss—at our own individual pace.
I wish I could say that nearly three decades of work and study in this field had led me to a perfect shortcut, a magic wand that I can wave to accelerate the process. Numerous therapeutic modalities can help release flashbacks and fears. In my office, I combine hypnotherapy, eye movement integration, meditation, and Emotional Freedom Technique (acupressure), all of which are safe, effective, and quick (SEQ) in an appropriate setting. Conventional and homeopathic medications, including supplements and herbs, can help lower stress and anxiety levels, but there is not a universal protocol or a uniform schedule to fit everyone. (See Appendix Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Stress, page 249.)
Coming to Terms with Loss and Change
Coming to terms with helplessness may be our greatest long-term challenge. As a member of a critical incident stress management team, I am learning how important it is to balance professional competence with the reality that some tragedies are beyond anyone’s control and that they are difficult, or even impossible, to understand. It takes humility to admit that sometimes even expertise and experience cannot protect us from events that are larger than life.
But we can transition to a more productive viewpoint. Traumatic loss gives us an opportunity to reassess values and beliefs.
“If I am organized and logical, my life will always be safe” is one example of a belief that a tragic event can instantly render obsolete. Loss makes us question what I call the Four Assumptions of Western Civilization: More is better. Bigger is better. Faster is better. Newer is better. In fact, whenever I have asked someone who has been living without clean water or electricity for a month, “How are those assumptions working for you now?” I never hear back, “Great.”
Building a Proactive Mindset
Perhaps it’s time to take a new look at beliefs that no longer work. Many of us believe that “positive thinking” always attracts what we want. Sadly, a tragic event can show us that what we called “positive thinking” may have been wishful thinking. Coming to terms with that can be uncomfortable until we choose to explore how a proactive mindset can give us the thinking skills needed to integrate these new harsh truths.
This is not “negative thinking.” Many believe that anything that is not “fun” or “happy” in the moment is “negative.” Facing in to some of our new realities requires that we re-examine that assumption. When life becomes radically different from the belief that anything not fun is “negative,” it’s time to clear out ideas that don’t work in order to make way for pragmatic ways of thinking that address life as it is in order to take better care of your needs.
I am not negating the value of positive thinking, but if you believe that it means believing that you are entitled to get whatever you think you want, it’s time to redefine it. Thinking positively can point us towards solutions, even when the way appears to be blocked. But it is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to avoid dealing with painful emotions.
Finding Silver Linings
No one says, “Wow! I can’t wait to lose what I loved most in the world so I can find a silver lining.” Silver linings rarely show up right away. They take time and require patience before we can see them.
“Who are we to be outraged that we suffer things? It’s part of life everywhere,” says Dr. Laura Haigh, a psychologist in London. “There is always a silver lining from this type of crisis. You will emerge a different person and it’s hard to see when you are in the thick of it.”
After Sarah Mahoney’s ninety-six-year-old beach cottage was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, she never received the funds she had been promised and was unable to rebuild. Eventually, she lost her home and her marriage, which deteriorated due to financial trauma spanning several years.
“It showed me what really matters, who I could count on, and who I couldn’t. People are always surprised by this when something huge happens,” she says. “Sandy made me start over. She cleaned out all the crap and showed me that God never closes a door without opening a window. But we have to look for it.”
During shifts at the WTC Family Center, we would spend hours on the phone with people who had lost someone in the September 11th attacks. What was most important to me was being able to validate and accept the other person’s experience. Some conversations were more productive than others. It’s not easy work, but when I needed to push through, I would pause to read a sign on the wall:
“There is no change without loss; no loss without change.”
Duality in Action
Like the north and south poles, or two sides of a coin, loss and change represent the duality of our human experience. No one likes to hear this, but it can take a few years until we get how we are different because of whom or what we have lost. We start coming to terms with the truth—that life itself is impermanent, and the future, uncertain. Loss jump-starts change, and the process of changing helps us come to terms with our loss.
“No one feels and grieves the same. Everyone handles it differently,” says Ian Grady’s mom, Judy, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. “Know that you are going through whatever it is that God handed to you at this time. You can do it, if you just look inside yourself. You are powerful enough to handle it.”
“I am much more of a fighter than I thought I was,” says Rachelle Quiyara, the young woman who survived two random shootings. “The important thing I learned is about pushing yourself to come back and not letting yourself completely dissolve and letting whatever has happened to you win. The first time I took the subway again I knew that I am never going to be where I am not feeling the discomfort. But at least I got to the part where I could do it. I’m not a prisoner anymore.”
Keys for Getting Through the First Anniversary . . . and More