By Jenel Hunt
It was after 5.30pm; the time when the talk had been scheduled to begin. Clinical psychologist and disaster recovery pioneer, Dr Rob Gordon OAM, stood in front of the small stage at the Stanthorpe Civic Centre Supper Room for a time, then wandered over to a woman sitting on her own at one side of the room. After talking to her for a while, he moved on to speak to a couple behind her.
He was, in a subtle manner, working the room.
The angst that anyone might have been feeling about the subject of the talk or the fact that it didn’t start on time gradually eased and people began chatting comfortably to each other while they waited. Dr Gordon was there. He would present his talk when he was ready.
By the time he returned to the front to speak to the 20-odd people in the room, the atmosphere was relaxed and Dr Gordon could talk as if he knew everyone, at least a little.
He stood there, a slim man with thinning flyaway hair and an unassuming presence. He held the audience in the palm of his hand for the next hour and a half with a simple philosophy and an incredibly clear view of humankind’s emotional reaction to disaster.
He didn’t use notes or appear to be giving a speech he’d given hundreds of times before, despite the fact that he’d talked at three meetings the week before and had a couple of meetings lined up for later in the week in Victoria.
The audience was mostly made up of Stanthorpe people. Some had been personally affected by the 2019 Granite Belt bushfire. Others had positions in organisations where they were often in contact with fragile people in the community.
Carolyne Doherty, the Red Cross State Co-ordinator for Recovery and Resilience was there, along with Community Recovery and Resilience Officer James Wong, headquartered at the Southern Downs Regional Council.
Dr Gordon, who was nominated for Senior Australian of the Year in Victoria this year, has visited many disaster scenes – the Christchurch earthquakes, Bali bombings, Port Arthur massacre, horrific bushfires and terrible floods. He started on the path to disaster psychology after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires when he was part of a children’s hospital team. They’d been told it would take six months but after four years that first experience taught him how long it could take for people to deal with the emotional fallout of disasters.
“I realised that I was seeing normal people in abnormal situations. Anybody can get distressed under certain circumstances,” he said.
His entire career since then has been dedicated to supporting communities in their recovery during the aftermath of disasters.
Loneliness, isolation and exhaustion could keep people stuck, constantly going back in their minds to a previous trauma.
“One problem we face is that the whole system of how we help people relates to the physical effects of the situation. But there are certain things about the state of mind you go into after a disaster that make it much more complicated than just dealing with the physical effects of what has happened.“
He said there were three major aspects to the emotional effects of disaster – trauma, loss and disruption.
“We understand the trauma when a bus crashes into someone and causes physical injury. But when psychological trauma crashes into you, it damages your ability to digest and learn from it. The trauma is produced when the threat is high and it will be worse when you feel any degree of helplessness. The threat is what you think might happen. It doesn’t actually have to happen for you to wake up in a sweat from a recurring nightmare.“
He said a study across the USA had asked the question of people affected by disaster, “Did you ask for help, and how soon?“ The average time was 10 years.
“Why so long? And what have they been doing for those 10 years? They’ve been using everything they can – some start to drink too much, some work too hard, some gamble, some have fights in pubs. When you’re carrying trauma there’s a huge bundle of emotion within you … and it’s not going to go away by itself,” he said.
“You have to understand that you’re injured. Perhaps there’s a profound fear that you experience – a nightmare you have every night. There might be an external stimulus that is the trigger – a fire being lit inside the house, a bad storm.”
Another problem was a lack of privacy. Suddenly homeless, people lived with neighbours or in a caravans or other close quarters.
“In those situations people don’t really digest the situation. They don’t have a private, intimate space where they can get in touch at a deeper level with what they’re feeling; to work through their emotions.
“Trauma creates a state of arousal, of adrenaline. People get tunnel vision. They often don’t feel hunger or thirst or fatigue or heat.”
And while that was helpful during the actual emergency, blocking out the self for any length of time actually damaged an important inner connection.
The second aspect was loss. It could be a person’s life, an animal, an object like an heirloom, or an emotional attachment.
“Often friendships fail after a disaster. A lot of social friction can develop. It can be that one person gets a lot of help while another gets none. Someone might be exhausted, upset and feel abandoned. How we feel changes everything.
“We recover from loss by feeling the grief. We feel the loss. It’s painful and sad and we need to talk about it. It takes an enormous amount of energy to process. When people shut it down, it doesn’t go away.
“We need to remind ourselves it’s a memory we’re having. Bring it up, talk about it, write about it in a journal.“
Disruption was the third element, and it damaged routine. Routine was important, for being on auto-pilot allowed people a chance to daydream.
“We try to lead our lives in an ordered way, and routines save having to make decisions on many small things. While you’re doing something routine, your brain can use the time for mulling. You might be processing the emotions from a disagreement you had or thinking about your shopping list – it’s an important process.
“If you disrupt routine, everyone goes into uncertainty and suddenly you have to pay attention to a lot of trivial problems. You’re in improvisation mode all the time.
“It shows how important it is to bring structure into our lives. We have to create routines that work, even when our lives have been upended. We need pleasure and leisure. Fulfillment, achievement, satisfaction comes from anything that gives you a little boost – finishing a knitting project or repairing something in the shed. It gives you an energy you can’t get any other way.
“And leisure … it’s a biological need to sometimes do nothing.”
He also talked about the loss of values that could happen after disaster, mostly from disruption to routines that had been put in place previously to honour those values.
In a situation where someone was talking to another person who has gone through a disaster experience, Dr Gordon had some words of wisdom.
“Rather than saying, ‘What can I do to help?’ ask, ‘What are you experiencing?’ You’re not asking them to relive the experience. You’re asking them to talk about it. You’re simply interested in what they’re saying.
“When someone talks about their traumatic experience, they will sometimes stop at the most dangerous moment of the experience. They stop their story and go into their emotions. They might start crying or become angry and talk about what they think the government should have done. Simply ask them the question, ‘Wait a second, what happened next?’ Make sure they get past the worst part. Make sure they get to the safety experience and don’t stop at where they say, ’I thought I was going to die.’
“Support is not giving clothes. Support is a quality, a feeling. It’s a quality of communication, listening to each other – creating a sense of connectedness. When people feel connected, they can process their disaster. Create networks. Meet for regular dinners. Keep doing it for the next year or two. Relationships with people are much more important than the amount of money that’s spent on the affected community. Social capital is the factor that best predicts the speed of recovery.“
He finished speaking. There was a sense of loss that the session was over. It had been a powerful message, delivered with a gentle demeanour and a soft voice.
