Navigating the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

This morning I woke up to two bears outside, a little cub sitting on our front steps eating the pumpkin that my daughter recently carved, the mom nearby completely sprawled out lounging in the sun in a bed of freshly fallen yellow and orange oak leaves.  This is the “fall” that I look forward to every year in Asheville.

I wanted to hold onto this feeling, all of us standing at our screened-in window talking to the bears as if they understood us, our dog enthusiastically joining in the conversation.  This feeling is alive and vibrant; however, so is the visceral awareness of the horrific despair that has engulfed my beloved community and so many communities in Western North Carolina.

Each time I leave my house, even six weeks after the storm, I drive down the hill, and there it is, a scene straight out of the Lion King during Scar’s reign: dusty trees uprooted, cracked, and tossed around, all the buildings gutted and obliterated, cars and trucks thrown and shattered in the most unlikely places.

I remember the first time I walked down that hill after the storm, standing at the edge of the road that was left, aware that bodies had been recovered, imagining the horror of the flash flood that ripped through this area after a nearby damn broke, tears streaming down my face, when a car pulled up next to me.  A man and his teenage son stepped out of the car. I glanced over and said, “it’s a lot to take in,” to which he nodded and then replied, “do you need an emotional support human?” “Yes, I think so,” I said with a smile.

Adjusting to a natural disaster is nuanced and layered. According to studies, Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorder, and occurs in 30%-40% of individuals who live through a deadly hurricane.  What’s interesting to me, as a mental health professional, is the 60%-70% of us who don’t meet that clinical diagnosis.  What’s a “normal” response for the rest of us during a time like this?  If you’re wondering about the same thing, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Your brain is not slow, forgetful, or dysfunctional. Adapting to your world when it has suddenly and unexpectedly been turned upside down takes a lot of reorganization. Your brain is working overtime in fact. Be gentle with yourself and others.
   
   
2. Collective trauma requires us to sift through not only our experience, but the experience of our friends, our neighbors, and our neighbor’s friends.  The closer the degree of separation, the harder it is to process.  Consider the difference between hearing that someone, with whom you have no relationship, died and hearing that a little one in your child’s school died, or looking next door to see that your neighbors are no longer there because their house was carried away in a landslide.  Proximity matters.
   
   
3. Sudden unexpected loss that occurs from natural disasters requires us to find our way through grief.  If you know someone who has been through a natural disaster, leave all platitudes safely tucked away.  If you’re not sure what to say, consider a message from one of EM & FRIENDS, which were designed with this concept in mind, such as “There’s no good card for thisI’m so sorry.”
   
   
4. Survivor’s guilt is a common phenomenon experienced by many after a natural disaster, and often overshadows our grief.  As Tamara Hanna, a mental health counselor, shares in her piece called Survivor’s guilt verses Survivor’s Grief, “Guilt will silence our feelings, saying they need to stay smaller than others because we survived.  But grief takes our hand and leads us deeper through our individual sorrow.”  Guilt exists to teach us a lesson about what we don’t want to repeat.  Grief exists to capture the experience of loss, forcing us to recreate our reality, one step at a time.
   
   
5. There are many experiences in life that “until you’ve been through it, you can never understand.”  Natural disasters are one of these instances.  There is power and compassion in acknowledging, witnessing, being in the unknown, until slowly, you begin to realize how to take steps forward.  Again, be gentle, don’t rush yourself or others in this process.  If you know someone going through this process, instead of relating, just listen, and if you’re interested, be curious, ask questions.  This will feel far more supportive to someone in the thick of a natural disaster, and you might learn a thing or two in the process.

Lara McKinnis

Professional Development Specialist

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