Coping With the Stress of a Disaster

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Disaster and Stress

Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and fires are just a few examples of disasters that cause stress and can disrupt our lives. Knowing some basic facts about emotional stress can help us understand its effects:

• Stress is both a physical and emotional response that results from an increase in tension or worry about something that is dangerous, unknown, or disturbing.
• Stress affects people’s mind, emotions, and body. It can make it harder to think and concentrate. It can make it hard to control one’s temper or more easy to cry than usual. It can upset a person’s digestion and make it hard to sleep, even when tired. Sometimes stress will make the heart beat faster, cause stomach problems, or cause you to feel short of breath.
• Some of the response to stress depends on the person’s age. The young and the elderly show stress in different ways and may need specific ways to relieve stress for each of those age groups.

Relocation and Stress

Unplanned evacuations during a disaster can cause great stress on a community and on the individuals in that community. Some of the stressful factors related to sudden evacuations are the following

• Disruptions of daily life routines
• Separation from family, friends, and coworkers
• Worries about the condition of homes and community
• Concerns about pets
• Loss of family pictures and special items
• Difficulties getting around in a new location

The stress of evacuation can lead to feelings of isolation in the new location and of being neglected by society and government. Evacuees also may feel there was not adequate time to prepare for the evacuation.

First Steps Of Recovery

Recovering from a disaster occurs in phases over days, weeks, and months. Soon after being uprooted by a disaster, you can start the recovery process. Right now, there are three general steps you can take to improve the mental and emotional strength of your family. The following steps will help you to begin to retake control over your life:

Step 1: Rebuild Physical Strength and Health

Once you and your loved ones are in a safe and secure place, whether a shelter, a new apartment, or a place with relatives or friends; make sure to tend to their immediate medical needs if there are any. Be sure everyone has enough to eat and drink to regain their physical strength. Make sure everyone gets some restful sleep in as private a space as possible. Rebuilding physical strength is a good first step to calm shattered emotions.

Step 2: Restore Daily Activities

Restoring daily routines helps build a sense of being home mentally and emotionally, even in the absence of a physical home. Simple routines that your family normally does together, such as family walks, watching television, and bedtime stories, help pull the pieces of daily life back together even in a new place. Restoring daily activities rebuilds the normal sense of morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Even though you are away from home and in a strange place, try to resume the daily routines as much as possible.

Step 3: Provide Comfort

Family members are better able to deal with the stress of relocation when they are comfortable and informed.

Comfort can be increased by

• Providing your family with information about other family, friends, and news of home
• Expressing affection for family members, in the ways your family normally shows affection
• Discussing, when ready, the emotions associated with the disaster and relocation, such as feelings of loss, missing home, and worry about family members, friends, and pets.

After the initial emergency has passed and the shock and confusion from disaster relocation have subsided, the physical rebuilding and long-term emotional recovery phase begins. This longer recovery phase has two steps:

1. Assess all physical and emotional losses the family has experienced. This inventory can help you identify practical actions to take in rebuilding the physical losses the family has experienced.
2. Develop an emotional understanding of the disaster experience and your relocation situation to help rebuild family life. Working through emotions takes time. There is no set timeframe or stages for it.

Resolving emotions is a natural healing process that relies on talking to friends about your feelings, mental sorting of emotions, and receiving practical and emotional help from family, friends, your place of worship, or other organized support groups in the community.

Emotional Healing

Your personal support groups can help you process your emotions and understand your experiences. Emotional processing involves experiencing the emotions associated with the disaster and figuring out what the disaster meant to your life. One way that many people work through their emotions is by “telling the story” of what happened.