Tragic Events & Aftermath (Trigger Warning!!)

[BearRabbitPants]

Posting in AIBU for traffic.
I was just wondering to myself about the aftermath of tragic events, in the very first minutes, hours, days after the event.. for example 9/11, or the London Bombings.
I suppose I've pondered Upon this as I visited London at the weekend with DH and a horrible fleeting thought went through my mind that if there happened to be a terror attack & we were killed our children would be orphaned ! (Very morbid I know, apologies!)
Has anyone experienced a tragic event & it's immediate aftermath? Or helped someone caught up in one of these events? Or worked for ambulance/fire services- maybe saved a life? I know we hear a lot on the news reports but I just can not fathom out how someone IRL copes with witnessing or being a victim of such an event & continuing with those memories... I find it so upsetting still when I think of the people that jumped from the World Trade Center , and the services that cleared the wreckage & what they must have seen...

*"Some will go down the PTSD route, some will haul themselves up by the bootstraps and get on with it.

I've lived in a war zone and I cant say it affects me, perhaps its supressed. I no longer duck when I hear a jet, but I still feel relief when I hear a certain helicopter (chinook). But I'm very no nonsense and very stoic. Others, not so lucky and over think and dwell."*

I can't relate to this at all.

I'm very stoic as a person but my nervous system's reaction to an earthquake was to be traumatised. You can't choose how you will react, everyone I know who went through the same thing also struggled with the trauma. One person I know drank it away. Another developed chronic pain that appeared to have no cause.

What a fucking disgusting comment. I have severe PTSD and if you think I chose that route there must be something seriously wrong with you

The PP, no matter how distastefully their opinion was expressed, didn’t say they thought PTSD was a “choice”. They also talked about some people not being so “lucky” (as them), which suggests that they know it’s not a choice.

The “route” was a very poor choice of words.

I'm very stoic as a person but my nervous system's reaction to an earthquake was to be traumatised. You can't choose how you will react, everyone I know who went through the same thing also struggled with the trauma. One person I know drank it away. Another developed chronic pain that appeared to have no cause.

Based on how I’ve behaved in very high stress/traumatic situations (albeit no earthquakes or terrorist attacks) in the past, I imagine being very, very calm during the event and the immediate aftermath. Then jumping at/overreacting to every little thing months later.

Fingers crossed it never happens.

To be fair to valid, they didn't say it was a choice. They said people deal with things differently, which is true.

Bollocks, Butchy. They meant to say that, as they went on to say how they are so very "stoic" and some people overthink and dwell.

I was stoic too, until I got ptsd and I certainly wasn't the type to overthink or dwell. It's a fucking mental illness, nothing you do or don't do can prevent it. You can't just "get on with it" even if you usually do, and you certainly can't prevent it in any way.

It has nothing to do with strength.

I’m not going into detail because of the Daily Fail, but @Butchyrestingface has it correct with my traumatic event.

I was very, very calm throughout the whole thing. It happened in slow motion, even though I was running from person to person to see who was dead and who was alive.

Eventually paramedics carted me off, and then I went home. No idea how much time elapsed. Wasn’t until I sat on my bed in front of my mirror and saw that I was covered in dust, other peoples blood that I lost my fucking shit.

I already had PTSD as it was, this made it so bad I couldn’t work and was a total recluse for 3 months.

Bollocks, Butchy. They meant to say that, as they went on to say how they are so very "stoic" and some people overthink and

I repeat, they did not say what posters appear to think they said.

I haven’t doubted that they meant to say “route”. I agree that was a very bad choice of words.

for everyone.

My son was very poorly when he was three, and I had breast cancer a few years ago (not at the same time). At the time, we just got in with what had to be done. It was horrible, but doable. It was afterwards, when life got back to normal, that it really hit us. However, time it a great healer. You don’t forget, especially on anniversaries of significant dates, but you do move on.

@carla1983

Tena koe e hoa. 185 people. 6.3 mag. I was lucky that day, I was at home, and ran across to the school where my babies were, and was there before that first tremor had ended. (It felt like it would never end). I helped the teachers with the children, I had eight little ones in my lap at one point, we raced in and did raids between the aftershocks to get sweatshirts and jackets to put on the children, as many went into shock, as we sat out on the tarmac in the drizzle.

The teacher next to me got a text saying 'CBD down. Cathedral fallen. Many dead'. My DH was in the CBD, and I'd asked him to go get a haircut at lunch. I couldn't get a hold of him. It was hours before he made it home, normally a 15 minute journey. He was ashen. He could barely talk with all he'd seen. He'd been delayed, trying to break into a room in the office to help someone out, then getting help for a woman trapped in an elevator.

Another developed chronic pain that appeared to have no cause.

That's interesting. I read that before the term PTSD was coined, many doctors believed 'shell shock' to a physical injury caused by the 'reverberations' of shelling.

As others have said, it's calm and practical and almost robotically instinctual in the moment. It's when the stress goes away, sometimes far later, that you get hit by it.

You never know what will bring on PTSD, it’s not a case of the most serious incident causing it, sometimes it’s something ‘smaller’ that affects you.
I’ve been a first responder at the 7/7 attacks and coped with it but it does affect you even if it’s mildly-I found I couldn’t relate to anyone who hadn’t been through that for awhile and it’s no surprise to say alcohol helps a lot at the time just so you don’t have to replay it in your mind.

My brother-in-law's father was very 'stoic and no nonsense', too. He had been in combat. He shot himself 5 years later. But then, he must have chosen to 'over think' and 'go down the PTSD route'. Honestly, My, that's a fucking disgusting way to think.

And bollocks it was a 'poor choice of words', Butchy. I watched my child die slowly by inches from illness. I was so 'calm' and 'stoic' I was a fucking refrigerator. I tried to put it to the back of my mind as my son has SEN that have become increasingly difficult to deal with. I have PTSD and contemplate suicide often enough. But hey ho, I'm just not as superior a person as My . . .

After 30 years working in the medical profession I have witnessed a lot of deaths and some not 'nice ' deaths. My 17 year old son witnessed his friend mown down and killed by a driver doing 75 mph last year. He called the ambulance and ran for the friends parents whilst paramedics tried to save him. He then had to go through a trial as a witness as the driver pleaded not guilty. It has been difficult, he is coping remarkably well but I do fear it will catch up with him sometime soon. he refused counselling with a trauma counsellor. He seems to get support from the small group of friends he was with and the deceased boys family. He rarely speaks about it but I've no doubt it has had a significant impact on his life.

TBH, the people I've known who prided themselves on being very stoic and no nonsense, and how they didn't suffer trauma as a result of experiencing very traumatic events, have often seemed to me to be lacking a degree of emotional intelligence and emotional depth. That's just the ones I've known, of course, not saying that about everybody, and it's just very much a layperson's opinion!

Some will go down the PTSD route, some will haul themselves up by the bootstraps and get on with it.

Fucking hideous thing to say, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Often being ‘stoic and no nonsense’ is your brain protecting itself and going into survival mode rather than fully reveal and understand the horror of what’s happening to get through it. The fact is there is no ‘right’ way to react, it’s extraordinary situations we have no experience of and instinct can override everything else.

The important thing is that people receive the proper care and support afterwards.

@mbosnz

I was at home, too and lived on the ground floor of a tall building in the city centre. Luckily the ground underneath it was OK and it didn't crumble.

I remember sitting outside on the street in shock in the drizzle too! It felt like the atmosphere or air pressure changed immediately afterwards and it went cold, or that was possibly the shock.

OMG, you poor thing. I'm so glad you were alright. It's funny, I had a friend the other day, it came up, and I mentioned the drizzle, and she said, 'I didn't imagine it then, it was raining?!' She and her DH had just had a big argument, he said it wasn't!

To have been in the CBD. It boggles my mind what you saw, and experienced. DH to this day, can't really talk about it. Or even his ride home (he was on a scooter). He said it felt like he was riding through Armageddon.

There was definitely drizzle!

Yeah definitely like armageddon. I remember sitting with a friend in my smashed up apartment in the evening, listening to the radio, no water, no electricity. Couldn't even get my car out of the parking due to electronic gates, we managed to force them open in the end. Left Chch that night and moved away!

With the earthquakes - what I found hardest, was that there was no end. The aftershocks were interminable. I worked very hard at being cool, calm and collected (with varying degrees of success), but with each aftershock you were waiting to see whether it developed into another big one. My youngest developed PTSD. We learned to hate the word 'resilient'. I got to the point that I was in a PTA meeting and I told the Principal of the school that if he said that word to me one more time, I would not be responsible for my actions. . .

I properly lost it when we had a 5.1 I think it was, December 23rd. I had 13 people staying with me for Christmas, and had yet to do my big supermarket shop, and I knew the supermarket would be closed for God knows how long, there'd be panic buying and queues for miles. I spent 3 hours in the supermarket queue the next day! (I think it was the 23rd. Something like that. It all blurred together).

As to the use of alcohol to cope - a friend of mine that worked at the supermarket told me that the first day they reopened after the big one, the first things they sold out of were wine and water. . .

I never said it was a choice - I really do wish some people would stop being so aggressive, confrontational and literal.

Ashamed? For being caught up in a war. Oh behave yourself. People do what they have to do to survive.

I think it’s very unfair to say people who are stoic are emotionally underdeveloped. I’m stoic and I compartmentalise but it’s not always roses, it comes out in physical symptoms rather than emotional, but also sometimes I’m glad I’m good at it, sorry! My meds actually make me less compartmentalised but I dont think it’s somethjng to be rude about.

I did get health anxiety once though after a bad internal infection, that was really grim.

@mbosnz - I don't think I could have stayed in Chch and remained in one piece psychologically, the aftershocks that happened on the day were bad enough. I was standing in the street after the quake and one of the aftershocks had rubble and masonry falling all around us, it was terrifying.

I did move up further up north but stayed on the same island and the earthquakes started happening up there too!

That was bad enough. I can't imagine what people who stayed would go through. You have my sympathies for sure.