hey there everybody and welcome to today's presentation on coping after a disaster
this is a series of short videos that I'll be putting out today in order to help you
cope with the aftermath of the tornado that occurred last night in Middle Tennessee now
if you are watching this after this event has occurred you know maybe years later and
some other natural disaster has occurred it is still something that may be useful
and helpful to you each video is going to focus on a special segment of coping
after a disaster so they will each provide you a little bit of different information
we're gonna start out by talking about what alters the impact of disaster for different people why
do some people seem to bounce back just fine and other people don't seem to one of the things that
we want to remember is that the longer there's disruption of normal routines the worse the stress
and traumatic reactions will be we need to get back into doing what we always did that way we
don't start becoming afraid of going out of the house becoming afraid of things or altering our
circadian rhythms in a way that we start prompting the development of symptoms of depression or
anxiety try to get back or maintain your routines as much as possible during this time some of the
most important things are making sure that you are getting up and going to sleep about the same time
that you are eating and drinking about normal you don't want to start engaging in using a lot
of drinking a lot of alcohol or something like that you want your body to think that things
are status quo as much as possible many people are in a state of shock from what they've been
through or what they've seen if you went through something if you had a loss if your house was
destroyed your car was destroyed and there was a lot of destruction or maybe your workplace
where your school was destroyed it's going to impact your sense of safety it's going to have
an impact on you emotionally mentally physically and interpersonally that's okay recognizing that
you may not feel that right away you may just be in the state of shock like oh my goodness I can't
even believe what I'm seeing and that's okay too that shock will unfortunately wear off after a
little bit and you will start feeling feelings and needing to deal with them other people may
not have directly experienced some of the losses I can tell you we were very blessed to be in a
place that was just north where the tornado hit and so our neighborhood in particular did not
suffer a whole lot of damage however I'm seeing on the TV I'm seeing throughout our town that there
was widespread massive destruction people you know died people lost their homes and it is palpable to
me and my sense of compassion for my fellow middle Tennesseans is very strong and it hurts to see
other people experiencing devastation like that and we want to recognize that first responders
and just your general person in the community is often going to feel a sense of grief of loss
of devastation and fear after something like this and those feelings are normal our feelings are our
brains way of telling us you need to do something fear tells you that there may have been a threat
that you might need to prepare to get away from and a lot of people after something like this
may feel a sense of fear especially because this occurred this particular incident occurred in the
middle of the night when some people were sound out asleep I know my family woke me up and I had
been laying in bed sort of half awake hearing the sirens thinking it was an emergency vehicle
and they're like no mom those are tornadoes the tornado siren you need to get your butt
up and I was like oh so we all went into our basement shelter and did that sort of thing but
there was still a sense of shock this morning when I got up and there was still a sense of
disruption this morning for us again we were very blessed to be you know outside of the
immediate path of the tornado but we still don't have power we still there's a lot of
debris in our yard and things like that so it's important to recognize that people are going to
see a lot people are going to have compassion and their reactions are going to differ some things
that impact a person's reaction include the size and scope of the disaster in terms of a tornado
this was a pretty big disaster and more than 40 buildings have collapsed there have been almost
two dozen people that have been killed as a result of the weather last night and that number is still
potentially rising so there is a lot of impact to our daily life there are roads everywhere that are
closed I mean you can't get from point A to point B without having to go through a detour or running
into some police officer or firefighter that is directing traffic so there is a significant impact
on our community it will us also impacting our community financially because businesses in in
Lebanon at least and I'm sure the same is true in Mount Juliet and other places businesses are
still closed because there is no power so you know restaurants cannot make food they cannot
serve grocery stores are having to stay closed because they don't have cash registers that are
on backup generators there's a lot of stuff that we take for granted that is closed gas
stations are closed because there's no power to run the gas pumps we need to recognize that that
all of that stuff impacts people's ability to get back to normal routines which will impact
their stress reaction because it everywhere they turn they remind they're reminded of how
powerless that tornado made them the probability of recurrence is another issue that affects our
reactions and unfortunately here in Tennessee we know that there is a probability there's
going to be another tornado at some point however the possibility or the probability
of another tornado of that magnitude that stays on the ground for that long is extremely slim we
need to focus on how long it's been since we had such such a disaster most years we don't have f3
f4 heaven forbid f5 tornadoes come through and definitely not ones that stay on the ground for
you know 6070 miles the probability of something recurring in this size and scope is pretty small
and we need to remind ourselves of that yes it was devastating and it's gonna take a while to
rebuild however you know next time we have a tornado warning next time we have a bad
thunderstorm we need to remind ourselves that the chances of us having a recurrence of what happened
last night the probability is extremely small and the characteristics of the survivor impact
their reactions to the situation children may not understand what happened especially really
young children they may not quite gather what happened especially I've been there they're in
an area where things weren't decimated and they see their caregivers getting all upset and being
stressed and the TV's on and schools closed and things are changing they're not going to daycare
and their routines are disrupted but they don't understand why a two-year-old is not going to be
able to grasp what happened they are may start feeling anxious because they perceive they feel
the anxiety from parents it's important that we communicate with our children that they are safe
now and if they went through a situation if they had some losses if they're living in a shelter if
you know you lost part of your roof it's important to explain to them what happened and help them try
to understand that again they are safe now and the probability of that happening again when they go
to sleep tonight is very very small we can't say it's none but it's very very small and I'm going
to do another video later on today on specifically helping children address their stress reactions
a lot of schools were damaged or destroyed by this tornado so we are going to see some
lingering effects of this disaster that directly impact children for months maybe even into next
school year people's level of prior distress also impacts their ability to cope with future distress
if you were feeling great things were going great you were well read from well read well fed well
rested and had all the energy in the world this would still feel overwhelming this would still
be a very powerful experience if however you're depressed anxious angry overwhelmed dealing with
addiction grieving if you had other stuff going on that you are already trying to deal with and
then this happens that's like piling it on and people who are already distressed may have an
exponential reaction to this situation because it just feels totally overwhelming and we do want to
make sure we reach out to those people and help them with social support and help them develop
a plan so they don't feel so powerless and out of control people's natural resiliency well learned
resiliency I guess also impacts their reaction some people can go through something that is you
know traumatic or stressful and they can bounce back and other people they go through something
that is traumatic and it's hard for them to get back up again things that affect our resiliency
include our coping skills our willingness to be aware of what we're thinking and feeling
and having tools including social support to address those things resiliency encompasses an
attitude of courage and determination as well as self-awareness and knowing what we need to
do to take care of us in a particular situation if you think of resiliency like a ball person
who's resilient is a ball that bounces if you are feeling like you are a ball that has a slow leak
or maybe a fast leak in it that means you're not going to bounce you're probably going to splat and
we don't want people to splat so noticing that you have that small leak and feeling figuring out what
to do to deal with it so you can rebound instead of ker-splat is going to help you deal with this
situation the next video we're going to talk about some really practical actionable strategies
that gives you an idea about how people may react or at least why they may react the way
they react and the main take home thing I want you to take from this video is that
the longer people are out of their normal routine the more distress they're going to
experience and everybody's experience of this event even though it was the same we
were all there it was sort of the same event for everybody but each person's
reaction is going to differ based upon a lot of factors so we need to be compassionate with one
another during this time all right thank you and I will see you in the next video
you