Showing posts with label gym shootings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gym shootings. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Stephen Farrell: Survivor's Guilt, Survivor's Anger
New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was rescued from the Taliban early this morning. He and his translator, Sultan Munadi, had been taken captive in Afghanistan four days before. The raid by British soldiers that rescued Mr. Farrell resulted in the death of both Mr. Munadi, one of the British soldiers and at least two others (news reports conflict about how many and who they were).
Most of us have heard the term "survivor's guilt." It's the guilty feeling that people have when someone else has died in an incident that could have killed them. It's the feeling of the person who called in sick to the World Trade Center on 9-11, or who skipped the exercise class at LA Fitness the night of the shootings, or who survived the accident that killed their friend. I think it's safe to say that Stephen Farrell is, at best, at high risk for feelings of survivor's guilt, both because of Mr. Munadi's death and because a soldier died trying to save Farrell's life.
There's a difficult twist to this episode as well, however. The British went in to rescue Farrell in part because he is a British citizen. His colleague, Munadi, died at least in part because the British initiated the raid, although it isn't clear who fired the shots that killed him. Certainly the British soldier died trying to resuce Farrell. This has the potential to leave some tricky mixed feelings.
On the one hand, Farrell has expressed great thankfulness for his rescue. He is glad to be alive and glad to be free. On the other hand, it has to have crossed his mind that, were it not for him, Munadi would probably not have been abducted and that, were it not for the British coming to rescue him, Munadi might still be alive.
Obviously none of that is Farrell's fault. It also doesn't mean the British military made the wrong call in going in. But it leaves Farrell feeling grateful to the same group that he is, on some level, angry at, and angry at someone who died trying to save him. We can all take a step back and say that all of this was the fault of the Taliban. Farrell probably can too. But the gut feelings following trauma are often not nearly that logical, and Farrell may not just experience survivor's guilt, he may experience survivor's anger, too.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Getting Back on the Horse
The L.A. Fitness in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania reopened yesterday, 18 days after a gunman opened fire on a fitness class, killing 3 and injuring 9 more, and then killed himself. Reports say that the room where the shooting occurred is already being used for classes. The floors and mirrors have been completely redone. Apparently it looks pretty nice.
Upon reading about this, I tried to put myself in the shoes of a member of that club. I tried to imagine going back into that club, into that room, knowing what had happened there. And honestly, I'm not sure I could, not after just 18 days. But at the same time, I know that I go into rooms where tragedy has occurred all the time. As tourists, we often go to see the place where someone famous was assassinated or something terrible happened. My own daughter, who was visiting relatives in Washington, D.C. this week, took a tour of the Ford Theater, where Lincoln was shot.
How can we reconcile the idea that it would be hard to return to a space where someone was killed with the fact that we seek them out without a second thought? Two factors come into play: time and emotional distance. There is no doubt in my mind that it would be easier for me to go to that L.A. Fitness than it would for someone who was injured in the shooting. It's probably easier for me than for someone who is a member but wasn't there that night. I have a cognitive association, but I don't have any sensory connection to that space. When I open up the file drawer on that space in my memory, I have newspaper stories and web photos, but I don't have any visceral associations. What's more, I have no doubt that as time passes that space will become less "loaded" for those who were there.
That having been said, there are probably victims who will never set foot in that building again. When the shooting started, their brains flooded with chemicals that heightened their senses and their memory, a throwback to our days in the wild when it was very important to be able to remember everything that was associated with a danger so you could avoid another one. The sight of that space may well be a trigger for them or, alternately, they may find it distressing that the room doesn't look the same. Over time they may feel better about going there, but maybe not.
The earliest studies on post traumatic stress (which is not necessarily post traumatic stress disorder, remember) were done on soldiers in World War I. They found that if soldiers were removed from the front lines and sent to a hospital for treatment, they were much less likely to return to the line than those who had intervention off the front line but still in the field. Once you leave the place where a trauma occurred, it is that much harder to go back.
That's why, to the maximum extent possible, we always tell people not to send their staff home after a trauma until there has been some opportunity to give them information about critical incident stress and self-care. When they leave when things are still in a state of chaos, that is what they viscerally believe will be there to greet them when they return. When they leave after help has arrived -- help for them-- it's easier to believe that things may be manageable if they come back.
The space where a tragedy occurred holds power, sometimes forever. There was a car accident that killed both parents and a son half a mile from my house four years ago, and I think about it every single time I drive through that intersection. But holding power doesn't mean that power has to be absolute. Healing holds power, too.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Sharing Our Trauma: The Pittsburgh Gym Shootings
As you all know, on Tuesday night a man walked into a fitness class at a gym outside Pittsburgh, turned off the lights, took out a gun and opened fire, killing three women and injuring many more before killing himself. I posted about this a few hours later from my perspective as a former Pittsburgher with friends in the 'Burgh.
As is often the case in highly publicized mass shootings, there's a lot of "woulda shoulda coulda" in this situation. The shooter had been planning this a long time, had done several "dry runs" of one kind or another, and had a blog that was pretty explicit about what he intended to do. It's hard to wrap our head around the notion that no one saw this coming. And would you want to be the gym employee who showed him, when he asked, how to turn out the lights? It's awful.
Because I came to this story from the perspective of a former Pittsburgher, I was somewhat surprised at how much of an impression this story made on the rest of the country. I had taken "ownership" of this incident from the perspective of my own history, but many more people identified with being in a fitness class. The most chilling thing I heard was a discussion on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." The host, Neal Conan, remarked that many women heard the news and said, "That could have been me." Rene Balcer, head writer for NBC's "Law & Order" commented,
But it's interesting, the reaction that could be me, because there are probably a lot of people who might be thinking of that gunman and saying that could have been me. . . Because, you know, one of the things that one of my detectives has said is, you know, bad men do what good men dream.I don't know if I agree with Mr. Balcer on this one. It certainly doesn't resonate with me personally, but perhaps I'm simply not of the right background. Maybe women in this instance identify with the victims and men may identify with the shooter (and maybe not -- male readers, what do you think?)
But all of this got me to thinking. Incidents like this are a nationally shared experience. We aren't all traumatized as the people who were there are, but on a national level we have heard the same horrifying news and identified in a personal way with it. Perhaps the greatest example of this, of course, was 9-11, when the whole country suffered secondary trauma en masse.
When we do Critical Incident Stress Debriefings (CISD) with those involved in traumatic incidents, one of the most powerful and beneficial things that happens is that participants realize they can support each other. This small, homogeneous group has gone through a common experience, but often they have kept to themselves in trying to process it. CISD helps them realize that they went through it together and they can be together in dealing with it too. Because different people tend to struggle with different aspects of an incident, they can offer each other perspective from someone who has truly "been there."
Wouldn't it be nice if our society supported us in being able to do that with these shared traumas? What if the conversation could get past, "Wow, that was freaky" and into, "I'm having trouble with this, are you?" What if being freaked out wasn't just something to say, it was something to get help from friends and colleagues about. We don't really like to talk about our feelings in this society. It's seen as a sign of weakness and instability. And as a result, we deprive ourselves of the best coping resource there is out there -- each other.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sometimes "Close to Home" Isn't Close . . . Or Home
I was perusing the headlines from CNN before heading off to bed tonight when I saw one that read "5 Die in Gym Shooting Near Pittsburgh." This caught my attention because I lived in Pittsburgh for 9 years and still have dear friends there. I clicked through to the story for more details and found that the shooting was near Bridgeville, where I once worked when I was an itinerant teacher, but where I have no friends now, at a gym that doesn't ring a particular bell for me.You might think I'd move on to the next story, or at least breathe a sigh of relief. And I guess I was a little relieved to realize that whatever awful thing may have happened didn't happen to anyone I know. I moved out of Pittsburgh more than 7 years ago, so letting this go should have been pretty easy. But the initial "Oh my God" reaction -- both cognitive and the physical "punch to the stomach" feeling -- remained, and I started looking for more information from the Pittsburgh media websites. The most complete and seemingly accurate coverage is from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
As I clicked around the web, I started to ask myself what I was looking for? True, I am just a news junkie, and nothing excites a news junkie like breaking news. But I think there are two other things going on. The first is that I was looking for additional confirmation that this didn't have any connection to me. One story wasn't enough. I needed to know it, and know it again. The second is that in the split second after I read that first headline, this story became mine even though it didn't have to be. I connected with it. And now, the fact that I don't know the victims or the perpetrator doesn't matter, because I've connected with the fact that someone knows them, and someone got that punch to the stomach and found out it was someone they know.
So what do you call this phenomenon? Secondary trauma is when you are traumatized by hearing about someone else's trauma. Perhaps it's that on a small scale. Countertransference is the over-identification, positively or negatively, with the people you're helping, but I'm not helping these people. I guess I would just say that this one hit a little too close to home, even though it's hundreds of miles away from my home. Sometimes your mind just works that way.
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Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
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