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"Terror Article"

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Suddenly and sadly, your world that was relatively peaceful and easygoing may have been thrown into turbulence. The effects of the terror attacks are taking their toll – physically – but I want to prevent you from mentally going down or breaking up. This small piece will attempt to help you. Keep it by your side and read it as often as you need. Read it aloud to yourself, to your family and to anyone who needs to be reminded of the truth – that the human spirit, like the Sphinx, can be reborn to withstand any storm. 

For a person who has lost a loved one:

Grief – one of the healthiest emotions that humans experience when they lose love or for that matter when they lose anything of significance. But unfortunately this emotion isn’t whole-heartedly felt due to certain misgivings about its expression

One of the first things I told the gentleman when he sought help a few days after Tragic Wednesday was that he’d better give himself the permission to grieve. And Grief is NOT depression. It is sadness, which is healthy and appropriate. In sadness people appraise their loss and comprehend the disadvantages that accrue because of it. So a person who gave joy and brought pleasure to your life and who is now no more, his/her absence can result in some barrenness for you. You will miss him, be sentimental about the good times and reminisce about the bonds you shared. This is healthy and beneficial. It does not equal depression – where a person bemoans his loss and believes that life now is not worth living.

The next question that came up was, how long can I grieve? Is there a time limit or a way to say that grief for this period is healthy and any longer than that, unhealthy? Thankfully, no time limit exists for grief. One can grieve for the rest of one’s life. Be sentimental and wish for the presence of a beloved. There is nothing detrimental about that. Because as long as grief does not become depression, it retains the healthiest part of being human – being emoting!

He then asked “How soon would I be able to move on?” However, what does that mean? Moving on does NOT mean forgetting, nor does it mean shutting out from memory what has happened. It is not the burying of the past and carrying on with life. Because it is humanly impossible to forget significant people in one’s life. On the contrary the less pressure he put on himself to ‘move on’ the better equipped he’d be to cope with the loss and in a way have no need to move on!

A person who faced the attack and was hurt:

She climbed safely out the next morning after being trapped in the Ballroom of the Taj for close to twelve hours but not before she had fractured her leg in a scramble to get to safety. A few bruises and scars of burns also reminded her of her lucky escape. She sat huddled in her room not sure whether to cry because she was alive or moan due to the pain that kept shooting through her legs.

I tried to help by teaching her to STOP CATASTROPHIZING AND AWFULIZING. Rather than over-emphasizing the negative aspects of a situation and needlessly escalating its seriousness, it was preferable to realize that however bad the situation was, it could always be worse! Accepting the negatives in life for what they are, but not blowing them out of proportion would enable her to deal better with whatever had happened.

Plus, by teaching her to KEEP HER THOUGHTS IN THE PRESENT she could count her blessings. The very fact that she was talking to me meant that she HAD WITHSTOOD the UNFORTUNATE and the VERY BAD reality. She had an advantage. She really did. She had already COPED! If she focused her thoughts on that, rather than the fact of what further ‘calamities’ might happen, she would make herself less anxious. Also by reminding herself that what had happened had happened – TOUGH but true – and worrying about it, would not undo or prevent further happenings would help her feel empowered.

She could CHOOSE to make a bad situation worse if she VIEWED the situation in detrimental ways. Accepting responsibility for her feelings – because honestly, that was the only thing within her control – could help her to light up her life.  Because it is the MEANING that she would give to this tragedy that would ascertain her reaction, which in turn would determine whether she would be able to draw any advantages from it. Advantages? Yes, because YOU CAN MAKE good things happen even out of very bad things

A person who was in the attacks but escaped:

She grabbed of all the things, her laptop, when she fled the next morning as the firemen climbed through the window to help her escape. No, she wasn’t hurt. In fact the first thing she said when she climbed out to safety was, “I love life too much”. I was called in to see her because she felt that she hadn’t (in her words) “been strong enough!” And what did she mean? She meant that she should not have been afraid, that she shouldn’t have asked her parents that she wanted to sleep with them for a few days after the terror attacks. Yes, to her, she wasn’t being an ‘adult’!

I helped her to ACCEPT HERSELF WITH HER FEARS. It’s that time of life when she would want to be tough and pull out all of her reserves to face this disaster. ‘I must be strong’ she’ll repeat endlessly to herself but on various occasions she will find herself afraid. And then what will she do? Put herself down and kick herself after she’s fallen – which will just make things worse. Accepting herself even when she felt frightened meant giving herself the permission to be human. Trying to be superhuman wouldn’t benefit.

Being gentle with herself rather than ‘tough’. Giving herself the right to feel ‘afraid’ and discarding words like ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ from her dictionary would do her a world of good. Because it wasn’t about being generally strong or weak, but having occasions where one had weak and/or strong moments – have you ever met a person who hasn’t had such moments I asked?

A person who saw and read but is still scared:

With all of us having watched and read over three full days, live coverage of the terror attacks, many have been reeling with nightmares and have become edgy and over alert towards the slightest of sounds and/or happenings. How do we deal with ourselves when we find ourselves getting over-worked and anxious?

• Accepting that life is uncertain is a great way to security! Ironical as it sounds the more we try to get certainty in a very uncertain world the more insecure we become. The step towards security is embracing with open arms, life’s uncertainties!
• Accepting that one is merely mortal and that we too could have been victims, takes away the idea “we will not fall prey to this.” A tad of grandiosity or unrealism – a great defense – does nothing to prepare us for eventualities. Instead accepting that we are NOT special and are equal in all respects would augur well for our mental health.
• Realizing that life is so unpredictable and that anything can happen at any time to anyone can give us a viewpoint on how to live. Instead of merely EXISTING, tragedies of this magnitude can be wake-up calls to LIVING!
• A tragedy of this enormity can give us perspective. Instead of cribbing and crying for trivial things, disasters of this kind remind us that we have nothing really to bitch about!

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