Handling acute stress after severe weather

(KBSI) – Missouri is in the top 10 when it comes to natural disasters by state, an expert speaks on how one can maneuver through stress due to bad weather.

Kyle Schott is Program Manager for The Community Counseling Center, and he says the counseling center is familiar with cases of PTSD and acute stress, since being a treatment provider for Bollinger County, where last year’s tornado resulted in five deaths.

According to Schott, “You have those secondary trauma affects of people who may have known the individuals, or even first responders to have to respond to those types of situations, who may have some secondary trauma.”

Experts say, when a person goes through a traumatic experience, they tend to hold on to the memory. Schott says, “Our brain wants to protect us from pain, right? And we want to try to avoid pain in our lives, and when we go through trauma, our brain, what it does is it tends to hold on to that trauma and even worsens it in our memory, in our recollections.”

Nightmares, heightened anxiety, and hyper-vigilance are all symptoms of PTSD. Schott suggests counseling or psychotherapy for heightened cases by noting that, “There are some really good treatment modalities out there such as EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Which helps our brains learn how to reprocess that trauma.”

He says one of the first things a person can do when trying to recover from acute stress or PTSD from tragic weather is to process the experience and debrief. “The worst thing we can do is not talk about it, and not express our emotions and say that we were scared.” Schott adds, “Sometimes, we say “I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say.”

Simply allowing someone the space to tell their story can be therapeutic for them, which helps them process their past situations.

“As a friend, as a loved one, we can do others a real service by just allowing them to talk about what happened to them.” He says.

Counselors suggest anyone to seek treatment or notify your local provider if you believe a life altering trauma or acute stress is starting to invade your normal life.