We continue to learn more
about the tragedy in Texas.
It is normal to have a wide range
of feelings and emotions to this
news. Yeah, so this morning
as you start your day,
we want to bring in Laura Richer
from anchor light therapy in Seattle.
Laura is a licensed mental health
counselor and helps us get through
some tough times like these Laura.
So good to see you again.
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me you bet.
Thank you.
So as we start our morning and we get
more and more details about this horrific,
really unthinkable tragedy.
In Texas,
what's a good starting point for us
to start coping with this kind of news?
What do we go from here?
So I think whenever we have an
experience where places where we
have some assumption of safety,
like schools or churches or grocery stores,
when that's challenged,
it can trigger a lot of anxiety,
and I think it's important not
to minimize that and to start
talking about those feelings of
stress and anxiety to help you
process them and move through them.
And in the case where somebody
might really experience a high
level of anxiety to to seek
some outside resources for help,
you know, Laura, I can't help
but think about the teachers.
Who might be watching right now
and who are getting ready for
school and heading to classrooms,
especially when you hear about the
teacher in Texas who shielded children,
used her body to shield
children to try to protect them.
I'm just wondering,
you know what kind of advice do you
have for the educators who are going
to school after hearing and learning
about this and their job is to?
Probably talk with their
students as well about this.
Any resources that they have available to
them with counselors on site, at schools,
or even finding outside resources
because even if they didn't directly
experience what happened in Texas,
there is still an anxiety that
a place where you go every day.
Like I said, where you have this
presumption of safety to go do your job,
that that isn't really true,
and that can that can trigger feelings
of hopelessness or helplessness.
It can impact your ability to do your job,
and so the first thing is to talk about
it and acknowledge those feelings.
And then if if needed,
seek outside support because it it is,
we don't want to minimize how challenging
of an experience this can be.
Yeah, and I have one of my good
friends as a teacher and she says
this is trauma on top of trauma,
especially when you know the shooter,
the suspected shooter in these cases is the
same age as the seniors that she's going
to standing in front of every morning.
It's just mind boggling.
So if it comes too much to
bear for a teacher or anybody,
if there's all these feelings
and it gets to be too much,
at what point do you seek? Help.
Anytime that it feels like it
that it has become unmanageable.
Maybe you feel helpless or hopeless.
Your sleep is you have a sleep.
Disturbances, you find that you want
to withdraw from your normal activity.
All of those can be indicators that you
do need some outside help to to work
through this and there is outside help.
There's a lot of evidence based trauma
therapies that can help support
people in working through these
feelings that can really have a strong
impact on your ability to function.
So I was just wondering,
you know what kinds of physical things
might one experience when they're kind
of undergoing stress and anxiety?
Sort of processing this news?
And we're all processing it differently.
Some people go on social media and you know,
post a lot to sort of,
you know, I don't know,
get their emotions out and
other sort of withdraw.
What's the best way to make sure
that we stay on top of being aware of
what's happening within our audience?
So if you start to become
preoccupied with a certain event,
if you're replaying it in your mind?
Thinking about it over and over,
that could be an indicator that there's
a need for some some outside support.
I'm also becoming very hypervigilant
if you are in a heightened
stress of anxiety all the time,
maybe for for teachers who are in the
classroom doing their job and they're
finding that their anxieties is impacting
their ability to to perform their job.
That could be a sign withdrawing
from normal activities,
feeling helpless,
or hopeless depression.
All of those can be signs
that that it it would be very,
very very beneficial to check
in with somebody.
Yeah, that's such good advice.
Yeah, lookout for one another.
Check in on the ones that you love.
Laura Richards with anchor
light therapy in Seattle.
Thanks so much for your time Laura.
Good to see you. Thank.