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Dealing With Tragedy

Lesa Warren, MSW, LCSW

 

When life is suddenly interrupted by a tragic or traumatic event, it can seem that the world has come to a screeching halt for those directly impacted. Murders, assaults, and tragic accidents that occur without warning are particularly disturbing and difficult to manage emotionally. How individuals recover from such situations often depends on the prior psychological functioning of the individual, the exact nature of the trauma, and the individual’s ability to regain some sense of safety and control over his or her world. There are, however, striking similarities in the ways in which we humans attempt to regain our composure and resume our lives after such an event.

While grief or sympathy is an expected reaction, another emotion is also tapped following a tragedy: a frightening sense of helplessness. Disasters, accidents, and traumatic events can invoke significant feelings of vulnerability and a loss of control in all of us. While each day brings countless threats and potential dangers to every human being, we have evolved to psychologically “insulate” ourselves from these fears and to proceed through our lives as if we, and everyone around us, have been somehow guaranteed another day.  We dismiss the chance of death or loss, and we find comfort in predictability. We create a bubble around ourselves, enabling us to happily overlook our own mortality and the potential for life to suddenly and irreversibly change course. When that bubble is suddenly burst, it can leave us feeling helpless and vulnerable. Life suddenly becomes scary and unpredictable, and those feelings can be paralyzing.

To regain some feeling of control and to again “make sense” of life after a seemingly “senseless” occurrence, we begin to search for both meaning and often blame. In an attempt to restore predictability, we replay the specifics of the tragedy and the events leading up to it over and over. We search all the available information to find something, anything, that could have been done to prevent it: “If only I had taken another road...If only she had called the police sooner...If only they had paid more attention to the signs…”  If we decide that someone could have intervened and prevented the tragedy, or that some sequence of events could have been recognized as a prelude to the disaster, then we feel that it is within our capability to prevent such a disturbance to our predictable world from ever happening again. If we begin to believe that it actually wasn’t inevitable or unforeseeable, then no matter who or what is to blame, we can insure that the same mistakes are never repeated. The awful randomness of tragedy is thereby erased, and our impenetrable bubble is once again restored. Life returns to it’s normal, predictable patterns, and the demons return to the shadows.

While these maneuvers to restore a sense of mastery over our world are natural and usually benign coping strategies, they can also be the catalyst for a disaster of another kind. If, in our attempt to make sense out of the senseless, we misplace blame on either ourselves or on another; or if, in our unbearable grief and our inescapable fear of the next loss, we create culpability or responsibility where there is none, then we have essentially restored our own sanity by sacrificing our humanity. To attempt to explain the unexplainable and to avoid the unavoidable is folly, but a part of our nature nonetheless.

While we cannot be expected to completely avoid these tragic tendencies, we can be expected to constantly question our own motives and reactions. Anger, grief, sadness, confusion….these are all valid and understandable emotions in response to Life’s sudden attempt to exert its own will. But they are emotions that we, as individuals, must process and resolve for ourselves.  It is important to recognize if a sense of helplessness  is complicating recovery, and to be able to look to other life-affirming activities to help restore a sense of peace and balance. If we are able to keep in mind that our own responses to tragedy and loss are often based in fear and a false sense of omnipotence, then we may be able to resist the desire to throw our neighbor into the volcano to deter the next eruption. Then, once we begin to accept that in many ways our lives are unpredictable and our days fleeting, we can begin to live more fully in the shadow of the mountain and to cherish each moment that we are given. 

 

 

Behavioral Health Center

Of Texarkana