After the fire

Australia has always been under threat of bushfires. As the poet said we are “a sunburnt country”. This year feels very different though. The extent of the damage in the 2019/2020 bushfires was serious and harmful in a whole variety of devastating ways. Lives have been put at risk and lost, and livelihoods have been taken away.

My goal in this post is to provide some tips for those trying to help effected families’ recovery from the horrible hardship they have endured.

Connect with people on their own terms

People are more resilient than we realise. For all people who get exposed to a traumatic event, only 20-25% of people exposed to them will be traumatised. With that in mind, we need to have a mindset of being willing to connect with people, but be willing to connect on their terms –  not assuming that they are damaged in some way. Most people will take it in their stride. Some people simply won’t be deeply impacted by it, and that is why they won’t need to talk about it. Still others will be impacted but they may not be ready to talk about it. For a small number of people talking about it will be too difficult.

So, if they want to talk about the upcoming NRL season let them do that. Maybe they want to do that because they don’t need to talk about the fires. Maybe they want to do that because they don’t want to speak of terror. Either way, let them lead the conversation. Connection with others requires that they are able to choose what is true of them and talk about it if they want to.

What hurts most is likely not the bushfire, only related to it.

How is it that some are deeply upset by the fires and others aren’t? What is it that determines whether someone becomes traumatised? Well “dosage” of the trauma is an understandable risk factor. The closer you are to a fire, the more life threatening it is, the more likely it is that you will be distressed by it. This isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is that one of the factors most likely to determine whether or not someone becomes traumatised is not directly related to the traumatic event.

In a review of many scientific studies, researchers examined 14 possible risk factors. What they concluded was that it was the factors after the event, such as level of social support and stress, that were some of the strongest risk factors for the development of traumatic stress.

Of all the needs we have social connection is paramount of them all, especially after trauma.

Natural disasters (fires, tsunamis, earthquakes), affect vast numbers of people but they typically have low levels of psychological penetrance. It often isn’t the fire itself that is upsetting. Typically what does impact people in natural disasters are the personal factors involved. These factors will be the determinants of  distress: Whether or not people are supported or taken advantage of after the event, whether people were empathic and showed they cared or whether they were indifferent.

Understanding this helps us to remember that if we really want to help, the best thing we can do is be a friend. Have a cup of tea, share a joke, go to an AFL game with the kids. And talk, talk if they want to, talk if they need to about what has happened.

The people who need to talk will need a deeper and patient understanding from us, and perhaps time with a professional. Emotions can be big and bossy, and the real reason for distress is often unknown to us. It might be the fire, it might be their future, it might be finances or the family pet. We won’t know until we ask and create the space to listen.

For more information about how to help people, consult the Australian Psychological Society webpage.

 

Jonathan Andrews

Heart in Mind, Brisbane.

February 2020

 

 

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The potency of connection

Love has a long and positive reach.

Much time and energy has gone into documenting the impact of negative events in people’s lives. The consequences of neglect and abuse has received considerable attention, and rightly so – the impact of adversity is large and lasting.

Less attention has been given to how love might impact on human beings, and the enduring nature of that impact.

You can estimate the impact that love might have on human beings by reflecting on your own experiences. Consider these questions:

  1. Who did you feel cherished by in your life?
  2. What impact did that person make on you?

Chances are that you are likely to report positive experiences that are related to it: Positive mood states and positive physical states. No wonder human beings are prone to nostalgia. If you’ve been fortunate, you may have had a parent cherish you and the positive impact of this might well be life long.

Being cherished by others has lasting and far reaching consequences. In 1938, 268 men were gathered together and studied as a cohort as they aged. The cohort of men, of which John F Kennedy was one of the participants, were a part of the “The Harvard Grant Study”. It is a longitudinal prospective study, meaning it looks a little like a photo album – photos and snapshots taken of the men at regular intervals for the rest of their lives.

The Harvard Grant Study has some illuminating things to say about the impact of love. Based on the participants descriptions of the relationships with their caregivers, each participant was given a score from 5-25. The scores were then separated into quartiles with the top quartile reporting warm relationships in their early years. They were given the label “cherished”. The bottom quartile reported having had “bleak” relationships. They were given the label “loveless”.

By the time the men were in their seventh decade “the fifty-nine men with the warmest childhoods (the ‘Cherished’) made 50% more money than the sixty-three men with the bleakest childhood (the ‘Loveless’)”*.

The ability to earn an income is not the defining outcome of flourishing, but is one outcome among many others that are prompted by being cherished.

A variety of other positive consequences for having been loved were also found: The cherished were eight times less likely to have been depressed, they spent less time abusing drugs, had higher levels of life satisfaction and were four times more likely than the Loveless to enjoy warm social supports at 70.

This brings about an opportunity that I wish we all felt more urgent about. It is true that love received early in life is a set up for life, but it is more accurate to say that love is a set up for the rest of your life – no matter what age you are. With that in mind we have the power within us, not to make a success of ourselves, but to make a success of others. It need not be anything contrived, you don’t need to organise people you love or develop a plan for people you love. It is far more simple, far more beautiful and far more potent. It is to cherish someone close to you, because when you do you will set them up for a positive future.

*Vaillant, G.E. (2012). Triumphs of Experience: The men of the Harvard Grant Study. Belknap: Cambridge. p113.

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The Antidote – What goes right is often more important than what has gone wrong

What would it be like if we could take an antidote that could wipe out almost all the impact of poor treatment we have ever received? I’m sure if a pharmaceutical company could bottle such a pill, it would be a best seller.

There may be such an antidote available, but the the down side for pharmaceutical companies is that they won’t be able to bottle it. The good side is, that this antidote is often a lot closer that you think.

In 2004 Joan Kaufman* and colleagues from Yale University gathered together 101 children. 57 of the 101 children were chosen because of their relational history. Those children had parents or caregivers that had abused them and/or failed to attend to their needs. Their parents were at times in custody or under the influence or drugs or alcohol. The children were that badly treated by caregivers that they were removed from their homes by the state. The remaining 44 children in the study were used as a control group, so that comparisons could be made.

Kaufman and her fellow researchers went on to examine the children who were genetically at risk of mental health difficulties. Having done that, they then went on to quantify the level of depression in all the children (the genetically at risk and the more genetically robust children).

In one way, the researchers found what they expected: Children who were genetically at risk of depression were twice as likely to suffer from depression when they have been mistreated as those who were genetically at risk but not mistreated.

It sounds like a ‘fait accompli’, for these children; fortunately, there was good news to come. And I hope this piece of information speaks to you and gives you hope.

The researchers also found that if the child who was at risk genetically had been mistreated but had one trusted adult who they connected with, I’ll repeat that….. just one adult for even as little as once per month or more, the impact of the abuse was only modest. They experienced the same level of emotional upheaval that was found in the genetically vulnerable children who had never been abused. As little as just one, caring adult. Just one. Once a month. That is all.

The impact of one caring adult all but wiped out the impact of the abuse they had endured. The wise words of George Vaillant a one time lead researcher on the Harvard Grant Study ring true again: “What goes right is more important than what goes wrong”.

For many of us who have been hurt it is up to us to ensure that we seek out positive support from others. For those of us who haven’t been hurt or who have recovered from being hurt, it is up to us to provide that support to others. Positive relationships hold out the promise of real change for us, our families and our churches.

*Kaufman, J., et al (2004). Social supports and serotonin transporter gene moderate depression in maltreated children. PNAS, 101(49), 17316-17321.

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“Dirty”

Susan* is a lovely lady. She is 55 years of age with two adult children. She is married, a grandma and actively involved in her church. If you met her  you’d never guess that she walks around in constant low-level apprehension that others will react poorly to her. She is nearly always concerned that others will be disgusted. After a year of therapy she explained why.

Over forty years ago, her mum asked her to take a meal to her mum’s cousin down the road. At his house he would commit violent sexual acts against her that are to this day almost too hard for her to talk about. She was so confused and ashamed at the time that she was unable to report what happened. She felt revolting and dirty. She tried to get out of going back to this relative, but her mother insisted she go and deliver a meal. She thought that her mum would never understand so she complied with her mother’s directions and went back again. And again.

I told her that this man was a criminal and a pedophile who deserved to be locked up for a long time in jail. Even as I said this to her you could tell that it was not nearly as therapeutic for her as being listened to. Being heard precedes being understood or defended. When I thanked her at the end of our conversation for her courage, she thanked me for listening, and for not being ashamed of her, when she was so ashamed of herself.  

Susan is like a lot of people who have been harmed; she began to describe herself in a way that had not existed in her heart until that point. She said, “I am dirty”. For many reasons, people become tagged with similar sad and damaging labels, for example, “I am defective”, “I am weak”, “I’m not a man”. When we consider the experiences that cause us to adopt such negative labels, it is understandable that we might do so. However, these negative labels are hugely damaging. The labels are either given to us by others or we give them to ourselves. Either way, they greatly impact us, affecting the way we feel about ourselves and the way we think others see us.

So what can you do if you have been harmed and you’re struggling? I encourage you to Face what has happened and share it with someone you trust. You may not need to see a therapist if you are listened to and are safe. It all depends on whether or not the incident has got to your heart.

Only when we are known for who we are can we hope to get a sense of acceptance for who we are.

 

* Not her real name. Demographics have been changed.

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