Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

Video is all over the Internet this morning of a police officer at University of California at Davis walking up and down a row of seated, passive protesters, spraying them in the face with pepper spray.

The video has sparked quite a bit of outrage in various circles across the political spectrum, including calls for an investigation and calls from the faculty association for the university's chancellor to resign. Last night, as the chancellor walked to her car, three solid blocks of protesters lined up on either side of her and stood in absolute silence as she walked past. That's quite a video to see, too.

This isn't the first, nor will it be the last, use of force against Occupy Wall Street protesters. That is a statement of fact, not a political commentary or even a critique of the police. It's gotten me thinking, though, about the affect on the protesters of being subject to or witnessing this violence.

On the one hand, by this point in the movement's history, protesters, even those who have no intention of breaking any laws, have to know that this is a possible outcome. That is especially true when you consider the following analysis, offered in the Associated Press:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.

If this is standard police procedure, then it's not terribly hard to imagine a very docile protest getting to the point of pepper spray. One might argue, then, that it doesn't traumatize the protesters because they know it's coming or, to be more extreme, they brought it on themselves.

This seemed to be the take of the Chancellor, whose statement on the incident said:

We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.

Whether this is acceptable police behavior or not, and whether these protesters deserved it or not, however, is entirely beside the point when it comes to deciding whether it was traumatic. Blame and fault don't actually have anything to do whatsoever with trauma. You can be traumatized by something you did intentionally or by its consequences.

What makes an event traumatic lies in the internal reaction of the person. If what happened is terrifying or horrifying to you, the question of whether you knew or should have known it was coming, or whether it was your fault, is irrelevant. That means that these students, and many protesters around the country in the last few weeks, may well need early trauma intervention services. My guess is that few are getting them, although I don't know for sure.

Occupy Wall Street is organized by "working groups" that take on everything from cooking to PR to sanitation. I think OWS now needs a trauma intervention working group -- the OWS CISM team. Sign me up.

Yesterday on NPR, there was an interview with Adel Idris, a Libyan man who recently escaped after being imprisoned for nine days during the current unrest in Libya. Mr. Idris describes some horrific things that he witnessed, including the torture and rape of other prisoners, and hearing the screams of women in the night. The reporter describes Idris' behavior during their interview:

He spoke to NPR for several hours about his experiences, his hands shaking, switching between broken English and Arabic. . . . . He stops talking and stares into the distance. He does that a lot during his narrative.

Later in the story, Idris describes the Libyan authorities' use of dogs on the prisoners:

What he do with me there with his dogs, I don't give up - never to give up. I not cry. I not scream. Not. [He begins to cry.] It's the first time I cry now.

What Mr. Idris describes is truly horrible, but his reaction to it is not surprising. He is exhibiting all the typical symptoms of someone who has been through a traumatic event.

When you take a class in Critical Incident Stress Management, one of the things you learn is the typical symptoms of normal, adaptive post-traumatic stress and how to distinguish them from warning signs of more serious problems. Not surprisingly, shaking and crying are on the "normal" list. In addition, "1000 yard stare" is listed as a typical symptom that is not, in the short term, of particular concern. From the description, it sounds like Mr. Idris is exhibiting a 1000 yard stare. What may seem less intuitive is the idea that someone could be stoic throughout such an ordeal, not cry while it's happening, and then cry while describing it. In fact, however, not only is this a common reaction, it's a good sign.

When I teach these classes, I encourage students to think of a traumatic incident as though they were a wild animal being attacked by a tiger. Their reaction, during and after the attack, is critical to the survival of the species. When the tiger first pounces, they exhibit some combination of three reactions -- fight, flight or freeze. Most of us have heard of "fight or flight" and it seems to make sense -- fight off the tiger if you can, run away if you can't. But freezing is also an adaptive response. In some cases, it may prevent the tiger from seeing us, if we can manage to blend into the background. And if we can't fight or run away, convincing the tiger we're already dead may save our life.

You will notice that crying is not one of the options in this scenario. That's not to say that no one ever cries at a moment of great danger, but this is not, in fact, an automatic response. Crying is triggered by a realization of what is happening, but fight, flight and freeze are triggered automatically, before our rational mind knows what is happening. Even a few moments later, when we realize the tiger is attacking, our full energies are dedicated to survival. We literally don't have the resources, in many instances, to cry.

Once the attack is over, our priority, from an evolutionary standpoint, is making sure we either avoid or survive the next tiger attack. This causes us to respond fearfully to sights, sounds and experiences that we associate with the attack, even if they are pretty irrelevant. If we smelled flowers right before the attack, after all, then that smell might signal that another attack is coming.

Imagine, however, that we didn't experience the attack as particularly bad, or that we blocked ourselves off from realizing how bad it really was. That might sound good, but it would be dangerous, because we would not be on the lookout for the next pouncing tiger. If humans ever exhibited this trait in large numbers, it's likely it was bred out of the gene pool a long time ago.

In order to avoid the next tiger attack, we need to know that tiger attacks are bad. That means that all the reactions of fear and distress which we avoided during the attack itself because we were trying to stay alive are critically important in helping us learn. So, when the attack is over, we cry when when we remember it. We shake. We can't concentrate, so we stare off into the distance.

So, Mr. Idris' tears are normal. But more than that, they are healthy. They mean that he is, in some way, in touch with how he feels about what happened to him. And while there are many more factors that go into determining how quickly and well people will heal after a traumatic event, we do know that isolating yourself from the painful feelings is a risk factor for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder down the line. So I applaud Mr. Idris for his bravery, his escape, and his tears, and I hope that Libya soon has many fewer reasons to cry.

As the protests over the elections in Iran head into their second week, and the conflict turned deadly yesterday, a video surfaced on YouTube of a woman named Neda dying in the streets of Tehran.

Suddenly, Neda is the rallying cry of the Internet. The video has spread like wildfire and clearly made an impact on those who have seen it. Comments on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter generally fall into three categories: 1) Is this real? 2) Neda, you didn't die in vain and 3) I think I'm going to be sick.

Why? Why is this video, unlike the other pictures and videos of the situation in Iran, so compelling? And why is it so upsetting, particularly in a culture where acts of violence are all over our mass media? After all, this video doesn't show Neda being beaten or even being shot. When the video starts, she is already lying bloody on the ground. We certainly already knew there was violence in Iran, and we don't (as the people in comment category #1, above, point out) even know if the video is real.

First of all, it is certainly the case that people are more affected by things they can see, touch, hear, smell or taste themselves than by descriptions. That is why an appeal from Michael J. Fox is more effective than a typical ad for Parkinson's research: We saw him before the disease, we see him now, and we understand the difference on a very different level than when we hear about it. Seeing Neda die is different from hearing that she died -- we understand it and feel a connection on a deeper level.

Another important clue to why this video is so powerful comes in the form of category #1 questions. The question, "Is this real?" clues us in to the fact that something like this happening violates our worldview. On some deep level, we believe in a world that is safe. That feeling of safety is level two of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which the Quarterback discussed yesterday. It is that belief in safety that enables us to function, to move higher on Maslow's pyramid, and to get out of bed in the morning. We live our lives based on what is likely, not what is possible, in terms of danger. This video brings home in a very vivid way what of course we already knew -- that the world is not safe, particularly if you are a protester in Tehran.

This is also why people feel like they're going to throw up when they see this video. It is not just because it is bloody and graphic, although that is part of it. It is because we presume it to be real, and because that reality violates our fundamental beliefs about the world. That is the hallmark of traumatic incidents. They shake our basic understanding of how the world works, and by doing that throw every other understanding we have into doubt.

Many people seeing this video, particularly if it is unlike any real thing they have seen before, feel unsafe on some level. Our appetite vanishes, we have nightmares, we feel sad or anxious or grouchy. We are experiencing secondary trauma. And if we don't, it may be because we did some other time. The Quarterback remembers feeling very shaken by the video of Nicholas Berg being beheaded in Iraq, even though the most graphic portion of the video was edited out.

I do not mean to imply in any way that the death of Neda is unimportant or that people should not be moved by it. But know what you are doing when you watch it, and when you have others watch it. You are traumatizing yourself. You can choose to do that, and maybe you feel you should, but the usual cautions apply -- find someone to talk to about it, not just about the politics of it but about the emotions of it. Take care of yourself. And be prepared to not feel quite right.

And with that caution, if you care to watch the video, here is the link.