Coping With National Tragedies

When tragedy hits our country, it hits all of us. Most of us experience a dizzying array of emotions from shock, sadness, disbelief, grieving, compassion, and even relief that the tragedy did not happen to us. The shooting at a small elementary school in Connecticut earlier this month shocked us all. How did this happen? Our children should be safe. How did that young man reach a point where he felt he had to kill his mother as well as innocent people and children? These are questions that have been asked since we heard about the shooting. These are the same questions that were asked when there was a massive shooting at the movie theater  at Columbine, at college campuses. Not only do we ask how these mass murders can happen, how can we prevent them, but how can we protect ourselves and especially our children? As the media uncovers more of the background story of this tragic event, and we hear and read stories daily, some will experience media induced post-traumatic stress. Everyone related to that school, students, siblings, friends, family, teachers, staff, neighbors, will develop some form of post-traumatic stress to accompany their grieving. It is very normal to experience stress in response to a traumatic event. However, if we buy in to the fear and begin to obsess about the event, keep our children from going to school, never go in to a movie theater  or back away from any public situation that involves large groups of people, then we reinforce the fear and make it part of us. In a way, that gives the shooter more power over us. To stay empowered, we must remember that we are no more vulnerable than we were before, we are just more aware of our vulnerabilities. These mass shootings are the exception rather than the rule, so they stand out. Think about all the millions of children that go off to school daily and are safe. Think about all the millions of people that go to the movie theater daily and are safe. If you have ever been in a car accident, you might recall feeling very jumpy when next you started to drive. Every shadow felt like a car crashing into you. It is not that you are more vulnerable to a car accident; it is that you are now much more aware that it can happen. If you give in to the fear and stop driving, it will be very hard to ever get comfortably behind the wheel of a car again. If you stop going to the movies, it will be hard to go back again. If you don’t send your children to school, you are telling them the world is too dangerous for them to go out. Yes, we need to be aware and take whatever precautions are available, but then we just have to go out and live our lives. 

In the county in which I live, there were rumors that kids were going to go to school with guns and there were going to be shootings. I sent my children to school with the message that we can’t cave in to rumors and stop living. As I dropped them off in the morning, I noticed that most of the parking lot was empty. At the end of the day, my children told me that most of their classes were virtually empty. What were we telling our children that day? We were telling them to believe wild rumors, give in to them, hand our power over to people that are not even rationale, and be afraid to live our lives. That is not the message we want to give our children or ourselves. We need to be stronger than that so we don’t live in the shadow of tragedy and fear.

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