Emotional Recovery After Natur (An Idyll Arbor Personal Health Book) - Softcover

Singer, Ilana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1882883438 ISBN 13: 9781882883431

Publisher: Idyll Arbor, 2001

Synopsis

Introduction During the first two to four weeks after any disaster, workers rush to fix collapsed bridges and freeways, utility crews replace broken poles, gas lines and power lines while water crews repair water supplies and sewers. The Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Salvation Army set up shelters and food lines, all working to repair the infrastructure and establish order from chaos. But engineers can't fix people, nor can retrofitted buildings heal the trauma that survivors of natural disasters experience.

Disaster survivors need more than simple advice from a grief counselor. They need a mental mechanism to cope with their emotional trauma. If you are a disaster victim, this book provides you with that mental mechanism. If you have a relative or friend who has been in a natural disaster, this book will help you understand what the person is going through and how you can help with the healing process.

Coping and moving beyond the emotional trauma works best when you use the right "tactics," tactics that are found in this book. The six tactics tell you what to do to build the mechanism you need. They offer a solution, not a diagnosis. They belong to a unified psychotherapy, not an eclectic collection of mental health exercises that merely try to make you think differently.

These tactics differ from traditional counseling in three profound ways. First, they help put you in charge of you. You become the expert on your needs and your solutions. Second, unlike traditional counseling theories, these do not rely on a "talking cure." They disprove the notion that to recover and avoid posttraumatic stress disorder, you must relive your horror by repeatedly talking about what you saw, heard and felt. (In fact, this is one of the worst things that you can do.) Third, they refute the counseling and medical notion that you will go through predictable stages of grief recovery before getting over your ordeal.

A human behavior model, not a medical disease model, underpins these six tactics. The human behavior model holds that emotional reactions result from ordinary human characteristics, not pathogens, and that our emotional reaction system is unique and differs from that of any other person. There is no formula to follow. Rather, you can learn to neutralize your emotional upset even during catastrophic circumstances, a position confirmed by three decades of field research at the Center for Counter-Conditioning Therapy®.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Practical advice for survivors of large-scale disasters that work when the techniques used by the "trauma industry" fail.

If we had known when this book was published in early 2001 what was going to happen on September 11, we would still have written the same book. We would, however, have left the word "natural" out of the title.

This book talks about what to do when any large-scale disaster strikes. It speaks to survivors of disasters and those who are helping them recover.

The first step, and the one that is most often forgotten, is to regain emotional stability. It does not help to relive the disaster over and over. It is vital to put it aside, at least for a while, and reestablish normal routines and contacts. This book is filled with practical, tested suggestions, including examples of what to do and what not to do as part of recovering from disaster and returning to normal life.

It’s normal, after you have been in a disaster, to be lost and hurting. You just suffered a tremendous blow, probably larger than you can comprehend. Your whole world has changed. Many of the people, places and things in your life has changed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t put everything back the way it was.

However, you can create a good, new life. You can rebuild the relationships with your family and friends. First, though, you need to regain the most important aspect of your life, your emotional stability.

This book is filled with practical information and tactics for victims of natural disasters and the people who work with them. There are tested, successful suggestions including examples of what to do and what not to do as part of recovering from natural disasters and returning to normal life.

This book was used by the Salvation Army after the Southern California fires of 2003.

From the Author:

A new book release, gives more than simple advice from a grief counselor. This easy-to-read book is filled with practical information and tactics for victims of natural disasters and the people who work with them. Tested, successful directions include examples of what to do and what not to do, all part of recovering from trauma and returning to normal life.

We meet six-year old Dominique, traumatized by the Northridge Earthquake, who needs solutions to her anguish, not theories or explanations. Parents, teachers, and doctors learn easy, practical measures to help relieve a child’s fearfulness.

Hank, a firefighter is recovering from smoke inhalation. His wife, Joyce, sits at his bedside as he recovers. For weeks, horrific memories of the Vietnam War interweave with images of being trapped by the Oakland firestorm. We learn how trauma effects emergency workers and their families, and how depression is often a normal reaction.

Through these and other stories of families, teens, and seniors, myths are uncovered and readers get sound new direction: Avoid anyone, psychologists, tv experts, and do-good advisers, who say you must "relive" and "go into" your anguish or you won’t recover. It is one thing to recall past horrors from a safe distance of many years, it is quite another to relive shocking events while recovering from the current one.

Victims and non-victims alike learn the frequently overlooked signs of trauma and what to do during the acute phase of emotional shock. Coping and moving beyond the acute phase works best when you use the right "tactics," tactics that are found is this book. These tactics tell you what to do to build the strategies you need. They offer a solution, not a philosophy, differing from traditional counseling in three profound ways: Putting you in charge, making you the expert on your needs, and letting you devise your own solutions.

About this edition

• Publisher: Idyll Arbor
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1882883438
• ISBN 13: 9781882883431
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 186