The healing path

Martha Huan spent much of the past fortnight fielding questions from around the country concerning the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

But there came a point when Huan, a University of Houston associate professor who specializes in crisis communication, had had enough.

"They wanted me to go on TV for a town hall meeting -- they thought I'd be excited -- and I said, `No, I'm going home and take care of me.' I needed to pet my cat and look at my junk magazines and cut some roses. I needed to remind myself that the world as we know it is still mostly intact."

Life does go on, even if we think we couldn't possibly endure another tragic photo or heart-wrenching tale.

Gloria Repp, secretary at Peace Lutheran Church in Colfax, Wash., was a high school student in Seattle when Pearl Harbor was attacked 60 years ago.

"I do remember that," she says, "but it didn't affect me like this at all. I think it's the horror of seeing these pictures of actual devastation in our own country."

Repp says tears have been almost a constant companion since the attack. "And I consider myself quite a strong person."

Sadness, grief, denial, anger, fear -- all these emotions are normal responses to what we witnessed Sept. 11 and during the aftermath, experts agree.

Ronald Rozensky, chairman of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville and an expert on the psychology of disaster, calls what most of us in Eastern Washington and North Idaho have been through "vicarious trauma."

"It's not the same thing as being there," says Rozensky, "but it clearly affects people at a distance.

"For example, lots of kids have seen (the attack) over and over on TV and want to talk about it. Even as far away as Spokane, they're asking their teacher, `Are we safe here?' That's a form of vicarious traumatization."

"Every time I hear a patriotic song, I break down," says Jerry Schutz, chairman of the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow, Idaho.

Huan says her oldest daughter, who's 29, worried she might be going crazy. "She said, `Mom, one minute I cry and cry, and the next minute I'm just raging with anger.' And I said, `Welcome to America. You're normal.'"

What's not normal, Rozensky says, is when you obsess - "when visions of planes hitting buildings pop into your head when you're trying to go about your daily business. Or when you find yourself avoiding tall buildings, or being hypervigilant. Then you need to talk to somebody."

While Rozensky and Huan predict time eventually will ease our collective anxiety, neither suggests Americans will ever regain the sense of national invulnerability we enjoyed before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"Things will never be the same again," Huan says bluntly.

But we do share a capacity for resilience. Huan cites a friend who was a prisoner during World War II, "and he got over that," she says. "Today he's happy, healthy, well adjusted."

Peter G. Williams, director of Webster University's extended campus at Fairchild Air Force Base, describes the terrorist attacks as "a major life-changing event from which I will be permanently altered."

"That's not to say that I think my emotional stability will be permanently altered," says Williams. "But I think it will take months to recover psychologically and emotionally from the events."

Huan remains optimistic.

"No matter how traumatic an event is," she says, "there's something about the passage of time that takes pain away. It doesn't take the memory away, but it takes the edge off. And I think the edge has come off of this for most people who weren't directly involved."

In recent days, Huan says, she's given her students permission to get back to normal.

"One girl told me, `I feel so bad. I watched cartoons for two hours.' I assured her there comes a time when we have to turn off the media," Huan says.

"The human body tells us what we need. When we're hungry or sleepy, we know it. And sometimes we need to be couch potatoes. We can only take so much intensity."

Huan expects the near future to be emotionally "lumpy" for most of us. People who've experienced other emotional traumas may find themselves reliving these earlier tragedies.

"It's kind of like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Things will trigger emotions, like the bridge that collapsed (Sept. 15) on South Padre Island," Huan says. "Those people immediately thought they were under terrorist attack," when actually barges had slammed into a bridge pillar.

While none of us knows what lies ahead, Huan says, at least it's unlikely any terrorist act will ever blindside us as much as did the events of Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, Rozensky suggests we take steps to prepare for a potentially rocky future.

"I recommend people build support networks - family, friends, church, folks at work - people with whom you can get together and talk about these things, so you're not alone," he says. "Within that network, prepare for how you want to cope.

"And that could include humor," says Rozensky. "I was thinking about the old USO shows, where Bob Hope would go and make the troops laugh in the midst of terrible things.

"We need to think about how we're going to cope with the next wave. Who are our resources? What's OK to do? Is it OK to laugh, to rent an old musical video and escape for a few minutes?

"We need to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves."

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
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