Today I wrote a fellow partner in the journey the thoughts below about stress, and I thought I would pass them on to you. Warning--if you are too stressed, just skip it, or read a little, wait a little, or whatever works for you. Actually I know most people don't read a long email like this anyway. It's okay!
I do have a trip coming up, without Laura, to a country I have not yet visited, which has had its share of problems in recent years. I'd prefer not to mention the name. I hope to be present alongside a great group of people who are living, to a greater or lesser extent, the sort of things I write about below. Anyway, please remember us, and if you're interested in stress, ptsd, and/or compassion fatigue, feel free to read further!
While there are different triggers, stresses tend to end up impacting people, so it kind of all piles into the same piles, different as well depending on the person. Some of the best resources are those developed by the Veterans Affairs department of my local host country here, so that's always a great place to begin looking online, and especially for material relating to conflict zones.
There are three overlapping things you
may be
thinking about, as I put in the subject line:1.
Acute stress, which is what we feel in the presence of stressors and within the six months after, is that experience of having our normal coping strategies overwhelmed. The most helpful interventions usually involve coming alongside and normalizing that, whatever the reaction or symptoms, there is no normal in a totally abnormal situation, so there is no wrong response. Acutely stressed people are not crazy, and even if they (we)
are, we (you)
can't tell very well during the acute time frame.2,
Post-traumatic stress, including PTSD, which is within a larger range of PTS reactions, is what we deal with when we have been through acute stress and are either continuing to recover or (PTSD fits here) stuck somewhere along the way and not really recovering. Here helpful interventions involve connecting thoughts with triggers and "unmediated" reactions, making sense of our journey, and gaining some perspective. (EMDR and healing pra'
er both fit here.) Distinguishing between "normal" post-traumatic stress and PTSD involves tracking stressors, response patterns, and comparing progress (or lack thereof) to expected ("normal") patterns and progressions. One of the key insights we can all have is that stress has a much longer tail and lifecycle than we tend to expect. If "life i
s on the line," (quote from Princess Bride, I think,) then the "normal" healing journey is 3-5 years, not 3-5 months, etc. So we can easily allow
6 months for acute stress, then 6 YEARS for post-traumatic stress, just
a bit longer than the "normal, uncomplicated" time frame. People may
think "PTS
Disorder
" way too soon and way too widely. And where there are complications--multiple traumas, either over time, in multiple domains, with children or families,
or in our personal histories--"normal" gets extended and complicated, not simplified or shortened
. I.e., if Jesus sweat blood, why should I expect not to sweat at all? Or to forget about it?!3. C
ompassion fatigue, or caregiver stress, is that part of the stress we pick up when we come alongside stressed (traumatized) people in a caring and empathetic way. True compassion costs us something, and sometimes a lot. It's easy to underestimate this impact. It operates independently of our enthusiasm for helping. In fact, the most passionate caregivers can be the most deeply impacted. This is true both during the acute phase and the post-... phase. Even today I have been touched by memories from early days in Taiwan (20 years ago) that still can be triggered at any time, by fairly minor connections
. This is a lasting cost of compassionate ministry and coming alongside. We may
find it hard to make room for this
, and it exists right alongside our continuing and growing capacity to come alongside others. Factors to consider as well, I think, are that the more we identify (or resonate) with those we come alongside and the more deeply we come alongside (or do life together), the greater the potential for this kind of burden.Here are two things I keep going back to:
"Containment, containment, containment"--like the "three rules of real estate--location, location, location", the three rules of dealing with trauma might be "containment, containment, containment." We can't undo trauma, but we can learn ways to limit it's globalization (affecting all of life), it's primacy (freeze, fight, or flight), and it's unmediated
impact
(raw, gut level, startle response.
) One of the important things as a caregiver is leaving people we process with more capable and well-contained--not less. Especially when entering an acute trauma zone from outside, it is easy to forget this. Processing, remembering, and reliving are not always healing, and we must be careful not to make trauma worse by our coming alongside, especially in the acute phase. It's much better to be a passive or even ineffective presence than someone actively contributing to the damage (God forbid!) Second, "normalizing" doesn't mean pretending nothing has happened, although even this could be a primitive form of effective coping especially in the immediate aftermath. Instead, "normalizing" refers more broadly and constructively to coming alongside people in a way that they come to view their responses to overwhelming events in a more thoughtful, coherent (contained) way. "I thought I was going to die, now I can't relax." Well, that makes a lot of sense. Relaxing would seem rather weird in this situation, wouldn't it. "I saw someone die, now I am always on my guard." Well, yeah! "Someone died or could have died and I didn't see it coming, now I am always skeptical about safety." Etc., etc. Normalizing means acknowledging that all these things have histories, reasons, connections in the brain, soul, and heart, and parts in the plan of the Father, which doesn't mean we need to like it, want it, or take it in stride.
When my parents were both dying of terminal diseases, I would talk to them and then think, given what they are facing, they seem to be doing extremely well. That's normalizing, not telling them they need to get over it (not be affected), be delivered from it (constantly believe God is about to heal them or has already done so), or see it as part of God's larger plan (just because he has a plan, doesn't mean I've signed off on it or can even tell that it's there.)
Well, I've probably said far too much. After all, people dealing with overwhelming things don't have a lot of available mind space for reflection! Still, here it is, may the Father use it for good, one way or another.
In him who keeps us, Steve
PS I
t also can't hurt to remember that when we are stressed, we tend to expect more of ourselves and of those close to us, even though logically we should probably expect the opposite!
Steve and Laura Spinella
US: 1930 Springcrest Rd, CO Springs 80920mail: 9685 Otero Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80920
Steve cell 719.355.4809, Laura cell 832.755.4261
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