Dealing with Crisis 3 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again.  I’m doing my third session in this crisis series and today I want to focus on the whole issue of disillusionment because I think it’s the most difficult part of all of the crisis issues to deal with, at least psychologically.  Disillusionment is the third stage of four of the psychological stages of a disaster.  It occurs sometime after 2 months to one or two years after a particular crisis event.  It’s typified by feelings of disappointment, anger, resentment, bitterness and the realization that the expectations for recovery and support are not being met and may never be met.  So you have this problem that happens and what makes it very difficult is that it often starts after most of the care-giving is done.  By two months a lot of the relief and development people have come and gone.  People are probably trying to pick up the pieces and much of the resources are gone. Maybe there is still the opportunity for applying for grants for houses or whatever, but the honeymoon is definitely over and people become frustrated, embittered and often that’s the time when they turn against each other, more so than ever before probably. Disillusionment is a very difficult thing and it’s very similar to the kind of loneliness that someone feels after they lose a spouse because immediately after a spouse dies, for example, or a loved one dies, there are all the preparations for the funeral, the outpouring of support and care…  A couple months later all that is gone and people are by themselves.  People don’t check up on them.  So the support isn’t where it should be.  Indeed, support is one of the key elements to working through disillusionment.

How to you tell if somebody is disillusioned?  The first thing is that they’re frustrated and angry.  That doesn’t mean that everybody that gets frustrated and angry is in the disillusionment phase, but it means those feelings of disappointment where somebody talks about hope for the future and that hope disappears.  ‘Oh, that’s not going to happen.  Nothing is going to happen.  We’re left here and noone cares about us.’  That kind of pitying talk is there.  Increased anger at the surrounding social and governmental forces is there where somebody was grateful for the help they’d been given and now they’re angry that is has never been met.  It’s just not there anymore and it’s not enough and it wasn’t enough in the first place and they weren’t really happy before.  This creates kind of a vicious cycle of bitterness and hostility and probably prevents people from continuing to grow and develop.  At the same time I think it’s a typical stage that people have to go through.  I’m not saying you have to have a horrible disillusionment phase to build up from there, but I think it is where you bottom out.  Most people are going to bottom out and that’s part of the normal process of recovery.

How do you help somebody who’s in this disillusionment stage?  It can come and go.  It can be there for a long time.  What are you supposed to say?  What are you thinking out there in listener land that you could do?  I go back to – it’s never a bad thing to listen. Wherever you are with anybody emotional or psychologically, listening can’t hurt.  I can’t emphasize that enough.  It’s just something that you do that you have to listen.  Most people when they’re given a chance to ventilate, think about what happens when you just listen to somebody rant and rave and be frustrated.  What happened at the end? With most people they calm down.  They said,  Wow, I guess I maybe overreacted.  Maybe things aren’t as bad.  When I said them, finally I realized that I was overreacting.  Most people are going to be that way.  Some people aren’t, but most people are.  I don’t think it’s a bad thing for you to just listen and try to not even offer any answers.  When someone gets to the point of saying,  What do you think I should do?  I don’t know if I’d even give an answer right there.  I’d say,  What are you feeling that you want?  I’d ask them back because they’re maybe not sure.  Maybe what they’re thinking is that you’re going to tell them that they’re a problem and that they’re whining and a baby and that kind of stuff.  So I want to say,  Well what do you think you need to do?  Try to move them, not try to tell them what to do, but move them themselves into a direction where they start analyzing things.

As I listen to somebody and I do have an opportunity to provide feedback, the next thing I want to do is to try and normalize it for them.  I don’t want to say, Man, you’re really sick.  You are really crazy.  You need help.  No, I don’t want to say that.  I want to say,  You know – if I was in your situation I’d probably be feeling a lot of the same things. I don’t know if I’d do it exactly the same way as you because we’re different, but I think I would be feeling things in a similar fashion.  So, I think it’s okay for you to be angry right now.  People of faith sometimes feel that it’s inappropriate or wrong or sinful to be angry at God.  I don’t think that.  I encourage people to feel or express those feelings of anger or bitterness.  God is bigger than that.  He can handle that.  So I’m just trying to authenticate, value or affirm people where they are.  This isn’t to say that if I do that for 10 minutes they’re going to be through the disillusionment phase and go on.  Disillusionment can take a number of months, it can get stuck.  Someone can get stuck in it and really never get out of it, but I think that each time I work with somebody who’s disillusioned and meet with them or live with them, I want to listen.   I want to try to affirm and over time maybe help them in tangible, practical ways.

Remember last week I was talking about – people who are survivors don’t want to be thought of as mentally ill.  So I don’t want to bring up any sort of mental things to somebody as they process. If they say, You know – I can’t seem to get out of this.  I’m really frightened by my negative attitudes.  I’m worried that something is happening to me.  What do you think I should do?  Well, that’s kind of an open door.  I would probably say,  Well, if you really feel that way then we probably need to look at this in more detail or get you to somebody who can help out with that because you don’t want to be feeling like you’re out of control with these kinds of emotions.  So I’d try to be a friend and I’d try to help them process through things and learn, grow and develop themselves because I think when they have a sense of control, even of their own negative emotional life, they will do much better in the long haul.

Disillusionment also is modulated tremendously by the social support structures that people have.  I’m often amazed at the connection with this one. I talk to somebody and especially if they’re really angry or hostile, what has happened is that they’ve probably cut themselves off either intentionally or unintentionally from their social support structures.  Now, you can argue that somebody that hass lost 10 relatives is already denied the social support structure and I would agree, but my point here is that we need to encourage them to get back involved.  For example, if I was in a camp situation I would encourage somebody instead of eating by themselves, to eat at the kitchen or whatever if that’s the way the camp is set up or go out and play some games or take a walk and greet people rather than sitting in a fetal position in their tent.  Little steps.  Baby steps.  Tiny little activities to develop more sense of self and control are very important, coupled with a lot of social support.  Even if it doesn’t seem to be that great, just sitting quietly…sometimes sitting quietly with a group of people is a major step in the right direction. So don’t set your expectations or their expectations up too high when you’re dealing with disillusioned people. A lot of this stuff has a real positive and practical side for dealing with normal crises that aren’t of the magnitude that are occurring around the Indian Ocean .  So maybe you can draw some conclusions about that.

For next time, I’m going to be talking about balance for care-givers.  So I want you to think about – if you are a care-giver, what sorts of things have gotten you into trouble and gotten you out of balance? Talk to you next time!