(The Psychology of) Surviving Disaster

If you get a chance to catch this show on PBS, please do so.  The show, Surviving Disaster with Amanda Ripley, talks about the psychology of disaster response and how your brain reacts to trauma.  More importantly, the broadcast includes way to "train your brain" to react more efficiently and effectively to a disaster.  Here's the high points:

• It is important to prepare for high consequence, low probability events.  In other words, although these events may never happen, if they do they will be of high consequence to you so you need to be ready.
• The stages of survival include: denial/disbelief that the event just happened, deliberation while you think of how to respond, and the decisive moment when you take action (or don't).
• At the moment of the trauma and right after you will probably experience sensory distortion.  On a side note, with experience and training you can mitigate this response to some extent.
• It is important to train for a disaster--both actual rehearsal and mental rehearsal--because in stressful situations you will often revert to what you know (ie: you need to train because if you don't know what to do you may end up doing nothing and that isn't good).
• With good information and practice you are better prepared, more confident, and less afraid (an example used was the announcement on an airplane to put your oxygen mask on first before helping your child.  What flight attendants don't usually tell you is that if you don't put your oxygen mask on first you will probably black out from lack of oxygen after 10 seconds then you will be of no use to anyone.  With that extra information you will be better off in the event of a problem on an aircraft).
• With the right mindset you have more control over a situation (again the example was being in an aircraft disaster).  Be sure to count the rows to the exits (physically if possible), pay attention to the briefing, and have a "what if" plan.
• Another example used was a house fire in which two family members died.  As with many residential fires, this one happened at night (10pm-6am is the most common time for house fires) and the family was not prepared (no working smoke detectors).
• As one psychologist pointed out, most people have a "normalcy bias" which means they don't expect or plan for anything abnormal to happen.
• The brain also uses "pattern recognition" to give you information about what is happening.  If you have never experienced a certain type of disaster, your brain will have nothing to compare the pattern it is seeing to and it will take longer to react and respond.
• And more info on the fire example: more than 60% of residential fire deaths are due to lack of smoke detectors in the home; most people die from smoke inhalation, not by being burned in a fire; when there is a fire in your house there will be a "smoke curtain" that you will be unable to see through so get as low to the floor as possible; and finally, can you exit your home blindfolded because this is what it may seem like during a house fire.
• You need to physically train in order to build "muscle memory" (ask anyone who has been in the military about drills and exercises...it's critical to a fast, effective response).
• Scaring people into practicing for disaster doesn't work.  Practicing and training does.
• It is important to build resilience in order to have a favorable psychological outcome after a disaster.
• Taking action and being able to feel like you are in some sort of control helps to limit PTSD.
• Lessons from survivors include: just because an event is improbable, don't put off preparing for it; get a flashlight--it will help you with everything from an electricity outage to a terrorist attack to an earthquake; program your mind to respond; realize that anything can happen at any time.

And a few things not in the show but relevant (ie: stuff I have picked up from the best brain scientists in the world who were on-scene and responding during a range of major disasters over the past couple of decades):

• If you suffer from PTSD get professional help.  PTSD results from responses from your lower brain.  This is the most primal part of your brain that you have no control over so using logic to try to talk yourself out of PTSD doesn't really work.
• If you suffer from PTSD talk to others who have experienced similar trauma.  This works in two ways, first you have someone who understands what you are going through so you don't feel so isolated and second, talking about the trauma over and over seems to help normalize the experience in your brain and lessens symptoms of PTSD.
• People who suffer from PTSD (and depression which often results from the trauma) often try to self medicate with drugs and alcohol.  This doesn't work--immediately you may feel better (actually you will feel numb) but the long term effects are not good.
• At the moment of trauma, your body reacts automatically (heart rate increases, you take a gulp of air and hold your breath, adrenaline shoots through your body, etc).  As soon as possible after this you need to "ground" yourself.  Take deep breaths then concentrate, focus on something as simple as feeling your feet on the ground, and move around enough to burn off some of the adrenaline.
• PTSD research and treatment is still fairly new.  If you suffered from PTSD related to Vietnam, checked into treatment for it decades ago and found nothing helpful, check back now...research is moving along and new discoveries about this medical condition are being made all the time.

World Coming to an End? Don't Panic

The Dave Ramsey show was on today and a caller asked him if she should take out her retirement money and other funds from the stock market and buy something tangible like a house because she was sure that the stock market, and in fact the entire American financial system, was going to Hell in a hand basket. If you listen to many pundits these days, you may know why the lady feels this way. Even I feel this way on occasion. Dave was firmly against this tactic and so was I but for different reasons. Dave feels that the stock market will remain strong and that American companies are strong in general. My reasoning is that:

• Disaster coming or not, you NEVER put all of your eggs in one basket. You don't sell all of your assets and buy gold. You don't concentrate all of your preparedness efforts on a single bug out shelter. You don't invest ALL of your money in the stock market. Diversification works for the simple reason that you don't know what kind of disaster will strike and there is a very good possibility that if you put all of your money, time, and effort into one thing that you think will "save" you, it is a good bet that that one thing will be the thing wiped away by disaster.
• A house is a nice investment but like any investment, it has risks. Like black mold which isn't covered by insurance. Like an earthquake or flood which your insurance probably doesn't cover. Like you may need to move in a hurry and selling a house is a time consuming thing (not to mention sudden market drops as happened during the last year or so which can turn you "upside down" on your mortgage loan within a matter of weeks).
• I prefer to be lean and mobile as much as possible. I have seen way too many instances where people have been ripped from their fairly normal every day life and been forced to flee their city or even their country with only what they can carry. You can't carry a house, you may not have much left in your stocks if anything at all, and you can carry gold but not easily or safely.
• I can't read the future and when I gamble it is for fun and not profit so trying to guess what is going to happen then betting all of my money and assets on what "might" happen is, in my opinion, a bad bet.
• Panic is not good in any situation. It is not a good thing to act out of fear because then you make crappy, not well thought out decisions.
• Change is inevitable. Life is continual change so trying to "keep things as they always have been" in order to feel secure is futile.

So what should you do if you really think the world as we know it is coming to an end?

• Keep yourself diversified, both financially and in life. Spread your assets and investments around. Spread your learning around as well. While some people think it is a great idea to be ultra-specialized in their work (a great idea if you are a neurosurgeon or rocket scientist), consider developing multiple streams of knowledge along with multiple streams of income which will give you much greater flexibility during times of significant change.
• Determine if owning a home fits your life style. I enjoy my home and need a place to live anyway so paying a mortgage, for me, is a sensible idea. For others, like those who are deeply in debt, move frequently, or simply don't want to own a house, they should not own a house. There are plenty of other options for places to live that may fit their needs better.
• Enjoy the things you have and the things you want to have but know that you can survive just fine with less. I prefer being a minimalist while other friends have to have all of the latest everything and enjoy having lots of stuff around them. Whatever floats your boat.
• Use your own best judgement. I'm a news junkie but when it comes down to it, I will rely on my own analysis of a situation before any talking head that you find on TV or the internet. Things could get better or they could get worse. I won't spend my life worrying about what "might" happen. I will prepare as best I can but otherwise enjoy what is happening today.
• Don't panic over what "might" happen. Instead, I train and train some more and hope that "muscle memory" will kick in when I need it. A friend of mine told me his theory on worry and panic quite a few years ago and it still rings true today. When someone is worrying about something he asks them what they were worrying about exactly one year ago. 99.9% of the time they can't remember what it was. Case closed.
• Enjoy change and embrace change. People who have a good outlook on whatever happens and can easily roll with the punches usually survive much better than those who cling to the old ways and develop an all-consuming resistance to change. You can train yourself to deal with change by starting small and building up your tolerance to it. Take a different route to work tomorrow, eat at a restaurant featuring foods you've never heard of before, or try something really off the wall (apparently, as my nephew tells me, it is all the range in school these days to eat dried worms and bugs which kids can buy at the mall. How's that for embracing something new with both hands?).

Preparedness, Survivalism, and the Cascading Domino Theory

What we usually talk about here is preparedness with a touch of survivalism. Preparedness means you have taken the steps to be able to take care of the basics for your family (food, shelter, transportation, safety, etc) for a period of a few days to a few weeks depending on the disaster that strikes your area.

Survivalism takes preparedness a couple of steps further. In addition to doing the preparedness stuff (stashing food, cash, and supplies) you learn and practice the skills that you would need to create your own shelter, grow your own food, fix your own car, and perform a multitude of other tasks that could sustain you and your family for a few weeks to a year or longer should TSHTF in a more serious manner.

When you reach the point of needing to be a survivalist, then we really have a problem. In most parts of our society, it isn't very feasible to strike out on your own and live a life of subsistence for very long. Although in many rural areas, this would be a slightly more realistic scenario, the majority of our communities, our states, our nation, and in fact the world, are so intertwined that once things start to fall you have a disaster of exponential proportions on your hands (the cascading domino theory). Actually we, all of us, have a disaster of exponential proportions on our hands.

The first domino was given a swift kick about eight months ago. The situation had been building for some time--consumers buying to the point of complete over-extendedness, stupid housing loans that made absolutely no sense (the people in the know conveniently looked the other way since they were making so much money), government bail outs (bail outs don't much work for a number of reasons) and now you have consumers with no money and/or no will to spend, and without consumers you have very little economy. Which leads to the bottom line of this story...

When you have a multi-faceted breakdown of society, it starts with one domino falling (consumers unable to buy) followed by the next (restaurants, car dealerships, etc not being able to sell their wares), followed by the next (manufacturers not having any orders from vendors) followed by the next (layoffs), followed by the next (extreme reliance on government programs that will not have the funds to support such programs for long because there are less and less tax dollars coming in), followed by the next (homelessness, hunger, etc) followed by the next (desperation, violence) and then pretty much your society has gone to Hell in a hand basket.

Remember how Barack Obama was all smiles and positivity when he was running for office? Now that reality has set in (and he is receiving daily briefings by the top economists in the country) he isn't smiling so much any more. As well he shouldn't...an entire country of people is looking towards him to save them. Talk about pressure.

The CNI response to most problems is to watch where the crowd is going and swiftly move the opposite way. So here are some humble suggestions to help rescue our country and our way of life:

• Don't rely on the government unless absolutely necessary (you are ill, you are a widow with a half dozen kids, etc).
• Build relationships in your family, neighborhood, and community. These are the people you are going to be relying on in the toughest of times.
• Look for any way possible to save, not spend money--bartering, doing things for yourself, forgoing purchases that you can't afford.
• Stimulate your local economy. While saving money just makes sense, in order to create an economy, there needs to be some spending and buying. Instead of purchasing something from China, shop and buy local whenever possible. Then the vendor will have money to spend to order from a manufacturer, who will have money to hire staff, etc.
• Get creative if you lose your job. Future jobs may look different. Instead of a 9-5 with pension, benefits, and 20 minute breaks every four hours, you may have three part time jobs including selling firewood, hustling your services as a contract accountant a couple of days a week, and working a seasonal job in your home town until the economy picks up enough to need a full time accountant. Better yet, repackage your skills into a new type of career. If you were an accountant, check into the possibility of teaching accounting at a local college, setting up a kiosk in the busiest part of town during tax season for quick tax prep services, etc.
• Change your attitude. Life can look crappy or like a wondrous adventure depending on your attitude.
• Keep preparing if only on a limited basis. Even during the height of the Depression, grandma had her "pin money". She couldn't save as she had before the crash but she could certainly save a tiny bit out of every dollar made.
• Volunteer in your community. Not only does this strengthen the fabric of your community, it provides much needed services that may have dropped by the wayside due to lack of funding.
• If you have it, don't flaunt it. In very poor countries, you only flaunt your wealth if you have a death wish or a cadre of body guards. Why people think that they should separate the well-to-do from their wealth instead of earning it themselves is beyond me but that's what happens if you have and others have not.
• This too shall pass. Life can look pretty lousy for a period of time but things always turn around eventually. Vietnam was a Hell hole a few decades ago now it is over run with tourists. After the Wall Street Crash and Depression in 1929 people were flinging themselves out of windows yet a couple of decades later things were going well.

With creativity, personal relationships, hard work, and a good attitude, this current disaster will be a great story that you can tell your grand kids.

Notes from the Tribal Conference

I attend a number of conferences throughout the year which focus on a wide range of topics. The conferences range from boring and unnecessary to the occasional stupendous event which changes the entire way I think about the world and/or myself. The conference I attended over the last couple of days falls into the latter category. Although I work with Native American tribes on a very peripheral basis, the conference I recently attended included a full tribal immersion event which taught me a number of lessons:

• Stop talking and listen to your elders. In a tribal setting, the elders are highly revered and a lot of knowledge is passed to the young from the elders of the tribe. Everyone is expected to be quiet and listen to the elders whether they are saying what you want to hear or not, whether they are talking in allegories or not, and whether they are officially "educated" or not, the wisdom they have to share in invaluable and the only way to learn is to stop talking and start listening.
• One of the elders said "Don't teach all of your children the same things or they won't need each other and the world will fall apart." Wow. Makes sense to me.
• The group walked though a beautiful flower garden. It was a regular kind of flower garden that you would find just about anywhere, however, with knowledgeable tribe members at our side, we learned that just about everything we saw was edible. Who would have though that stinging nettles would be something healthy to ingest?
• You have to look at situations from other's point of view. Everyday we make assumptions about other people, we create programs, initiatives, and policies that impact other people without giving much consideration to whether the people who are impacted want these things and how other people will accept these things.
• You inherit things, land, and knowledge not to keep for yourself and not to squander away but to improve upon and pass along to the next generation.

There were a lot more lesson than these and I could barely keep up with taking notes but these items made me thing both about how I worked with the tribes and how useful this information can be in relation to my preparedness goals.

Evolve or Die

Yesterday I wrote a post with this title but after taking a look at it, it seemed more like a "how to" than a "here's why". So, I changed the name on the last post to "Problem Solving 101" in order to clarify things. Now on to today's post:

The reason I was all over the how-to of solving problems and the why-fors of evolving is because this has been a truly crazy week. For some reason, it seems as if people have more, and more kinds of problems, than usual. Therefore, the first step is to take concrete actions in order to resolve the various problems that arise (see previous post for details). The second step is to consider the reasons that these problems are happening. As in most all challenging situations, the purpose of problems is to help you evolve as a person and as a problem solver. How many people do you know that have the same problem over and over and keep using the same skills, ideas, and activities to try to resolve the problem and lo and behold, the same problem keeps coming back looking for a resolution that never seems to come?
The bottom line is that when it comes to life, problems, survival situations, disasters, et al, it requires new and different actions, new and different skills, and new and different attitudes to come to a resolution. It is actually called evolution because you move from one state to another instead of staying stuck in the same old situation. It becomes, in other words, a requirement that in order to succeed, as Darwin so elegantly stated, we need to evolve or we will die.

Problem Solving 101

The nightly news has done a pretty good job of telling the country that the sky is falling. I'm not sure if the planets are not aligned correctly or what, but the past couple of months have put reasonably sane people into a tail spin. I won't even go into the whole topic of whether the doom and gloom from the media is encouraging the swift downfall of our economy or if economic indicators are doing that job on their own. But I digress...

When everything is going along well, there is usually little impetus to improve or change what you are doing (from the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' theory of management), however, when there is doubt or uncertainly in any area of your life (financial, marriage, job, kids, et al) people usually enter into some predictable actions: panic, anger, depression, denial/head in the sand, and (hopefully, eventually) change.

Panic is usually the first response to a change of situation. A lost job, a wayward child, a wayward spouse, a financial disaster, basically any change from your "norm" can set forth a negative response. Flapping around like a chicken, losing hope, imagining every possible negative scenario--the usual "I'm going to freak out now" response. Although it feels comforting initially, you will find that this response is not very useful at improving your situation. The panic response is generally followed by anger and depression; also rather unuseful emotions. Some people will then go into a state of denial and figuratively bury their head in the sand and hope the entire situation blows over before they come up for air. Finally there is change--either for the better or the worse. It is up to you which one to choose.

So how do you whether an emotional/financial/physical storm? Here's some steps:

1. Give yourself about ten minutes (alone) to release all of your negative emotions. Yell, scream, cry, punch a wall (not too hard--you have more important things to do after this step than waiting in the emergency room).
2. Assess the situation. Unlike an immediate emergency which requires immediate action, storms of this nature usually give you some time for thought and response planning. Get out a piece of paper--or ten if need be--and list down each and every one of your immediate crisis. Get every worry, concern, situation, event, problem, etc. onto paper. Don't editorialize as this will send you back to panic mode (step #1).
3. Detach from the situation and put yourself into General mode. A General doesn't have time to obsess about one issue--there are many fronts and each situation needs to be handled efficiently, effectively, and simultaneously as many soldier's lives depend on the decisions he makes. Detachment is necessary in highly emotional settings as people loose the ability to think clearly when they are too close to the action and too hung up on the outcome. How many times have you marveled that an otherwise competent friend can't see the disaster that is his love life?
4. Make goals. Next to each problem, list the way that you hope the situation will be resolved. For example, next to "electricity will be shut off next week", write, "my electric bill is paid in full, the lights are on, and there is money in the bank to pay the next month's bill".
5. Make a plan. And a back up plan. You have the situation clearly outlined in front of you, so the next step is to make a plan. Remember the old adage that "if you keep doin' what you're doin' you're going to keep gettin' what your gettin'". It is time for evolutionary thinking that will propel you past your current problems. With the electricity bill example, consider the steps it will take to move from the current situation to the resolved situation. Your plan may include: find out the total owed, ask for an extension until payday, look into community organizations that provide assistance with electricity bills, reduce electricity usage to the bare minimum to keep future bills lower, raise the money to pay this bill by selling something on EBay, babysitting the neighbor's kids, or collecting cans. Consider back up alternatives (such as taking in a roommate to help pay the bills temporarily), and put $1 a day into a savings account to pay next month's bill when it arrives. Most importantly, make plans that have a reasonable opportunity for success--if the spouse has moved out and filed for divorce, consider that planning to get them back may be unreasonable as it takes two who want to be married to make it work. Finally, realize that you can only change yourself and your responses--having a goal to change others, to make changes that clearly are against the law, or changes that rely solely on hope, not action, will be doomed from the start.
6. Take action. Lists are great for organizing thoughts but the thoughts don't jump off the paper and go to work solving your problems--you need to do that. Get up and get going!
7. After some time passes, review the results of your efforts. Continue doing what works to improve your situation and change tactics in situations that are not improving. This is called evolving. The opposite of evolution is called death. While you cannot change situations, you can change your reactions to them. It is often not possible to keep the status quo when everything around you is changing rapidly so it necessary that you plan your responses in a way that will help you to positively evolve out of your negative situation and put you into a positive situation where you will be comfortable and happy, at least for the time being.

The bottom line--if you are not succeeding at various aspects of life, it is you that needs to change and improve your reactions and responses. You cannot change other people, mandate employment in a profession that has moved overseas, or wish yourself into a better situation. Use your God-given talents and creativity to change your circumstances and change your life for the better.

Survival Psychology

First, let me preface this post with the fact that I am in no way a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any other kind of mental health professional. I have, however, worked with many front line military and medical professionals and there are a number of traits I have noticed in those who successfully (or as successfully as can be expected) transition through traumatic incidents.

Those who have good survival psychology skills often have the following qualities:

• They are funny as hell. While during a traumatic incident they are all business, when it comes time to kick back and let lose, they are so funny. Pranks and gallows humor are just a couple of ways to safely relieve the pressure that builds up. Some of the funniest people I know are coroners and paramedics.
• They have other interests. On the job they give 110% but it isn't their entire life. They realize one way to let off steam is to concentrate completely on something different (preferably something that doesn't include blood and guts). A trauma surgeon I know is also an award winning painter, a Navy doc enjoys curling in his off time, a fire chief spends all of his free time on his boat...
• They release the pressure physically. Working out is a common way to relieve stress, but so is chopping wood, kayaking, gardening...anything that gets your mind off of the horrific last call and lets the mind and body focus on something more mundane can be cathartic.
• They know they can't control people or situations. Expectations often go out the window in traumatic/survival situations. The ability to be flexible, "go with the flow", and get the job done is paramount.
• They seek help when they need it...some more willingly than others. CISD, QI reviews, counseling, talking with others who have survived similar situations, all are options to work through psychologically traumatic events.

As a side note, those who don't seem to survive psychologically trying events very well remind me of a pressure cooker. They add a whole lot to the pot, the lid is latched on tight and the heat is cranked up high. Eventually they blow a gasket and you end up with quite a mess to clean up.