Monthly Archives: October 2013

Divorce can take a devastating toll on male clients. How can counselors help?

Heather Rudow October 30, 2013

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Going through a divorce is a difficult process for all parties involved, but according to a recent study, it might take a greater emotional and mental toll on men than previously thought. According to the case study, found in the Journal of Men’s Health, divorced men were shown to have higher rates of mortality, substance abuse and depression—and less social support to fall back on than women.

But what can counselors do for male clients who may have trouble expressing the true depth of the pain from their divorce? Brian Canfield, past-president of the American Counseling Association and the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors, talked to Counseling Today about why understanding and supporting the needs of couples is more critical now than ever for counselors.

What are your thoughts on the study?

I found the study interesting in that it provided support for what many have recognized anecdotally regarding the impact of divorce upon many men. However, I would be cautious in generalizing the conclusions to all men. Statistical data applies to aggregates and not individuals, so the findings may or may not be applicable to a particular man going through a divorce.

Have you noticed a gender bias when it comes to coping with divorce?

In my practice I have noticed that women tend to express emotions of “sadness,” while men tend to be more likely to express feelings of “anger.” However, I’ve observed a range of emotions among both men and women. So while there may be some differences, I suspect the emotional response range among groups of men and groups of women is broader than any mean difference between gender groups.

What coping mechanisms have you suggested for male clients going through a divorce?

I support my clients in recognizing that divorce is a transitional period. The typical narrative is one of “loss” and “failure.” I encourage clients to use the divorce experience to learn what they wish to have different in the future, particularly in relationships. Though things will be different after divorce, depending upon the client’s willingness to learn from the experience, things can and will be better in the future.

Have you found that male clients going through a divorce are less ready to talk about how they’re feeling?
I find that most men have no difficulty in expressing feelings associated with “anger.” However, that is only part of the emotional spectrum and often there are some underlying feelings with which men are less comfortable. I encourage men to recognize that feelings and expressions of “anger” sometimes serve a temporary useful purpose in masking underlying uncomfortable feelings of “guilt,” “sadness” and “loss.” This realization is often a useful step for men in recognizing and accepting their role in the failure of their marriage.

Do you believe that it has gotten easier or worse for men going through or coping with a divorce? Why?

Divorce remains a very difficult experience for all concerned. However, increased access to qualified counselors with specialized skills for helping couples, families, and individuals dealing with the impact of divorce is a vast improvement over past decades. Help is available, provided a person in need seeks help.

How can counselors help a male client going through a divorce?

As counselors, we can help our clients by providing a supportive, caring, non-judgmental, genuine and safe environment for the client to explore their feelings, behaviors, and life-choice options. Working in a collaborative partnership with the client as a caring and objective professional with no personal agenda is the best way to support a client in their efforts to bring about desired changes.

What signs should counselors be on the look out for in male divorced clients?

Always assess for symptoms of depression and address ways the client can better attend to their physical and emotional needs (e.g. diet, exercise, etc.) Although only about 10 percent of clients with symptoms of depression have suicidal thoughts, when depressed symptoms are evident always assess for suicidal ideation and follow appropriate protocols to safeguard the client as may be warranted. In my experience, this is rare – but essential.

Additional thoughts:

For the vast majority of people, marriage is difficult. Since approximately 45 percent of marriages end in divorce, it is often helpful for clients to reconsider basic assumptions and expectations about marriage and divorce. I regularly see “reasonable” and “sane” people struggling to change an unhappy marriage. Many of us recognize that the institution of marriage is essential to a stable society. As such, the role of counselors in better understanding and supporting the needs of individuals and couples is more critical than ever.

Heather Rudow is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at hrudow@counseling.org.

German counselor uses art and music to promote resilience in New Orleans

Heather Rudow October 25, 2013

Click here to listen to a song by counselor Klaus Lumma and jazz harpist Patrice Fisher.

Klaus Lumma may be from Germany, but the city of New Orleans has become a second home to him.

Lumma is a counselor in private practice, a certified art therapist and a senior adviser to the Institute for Humanistic Psychology and the Akademie Faber-Castell, a youth art school in Germany. He has been teaching counseling and humanistic psychology at the Gestalt Institute of New Orleans since 1996.

Since 2000, Lumma has also been offering a six-day intensive program for European counseling students interested in adding fine arts interventions to their counseling practice. The program culminates with the students taking a trip to New Orleans’ Einstein Charter School to experience its art counseling program.

The longtime musician and composer is also a regular guest performer at the New Orleans French Quarter Festival.

Lumma, who plays both the trumpet and the saxophone, first became interested in music at age 13. But in 2004, he combined his love for music with his passion for mental health.

“I had the idea to compose songs according to each cycle in Pamela Levin’s theory of human development,” explains Lumma, an international member of the American Counseling Association.

He uses the songs as interventions for his clients.

“I ask them which developmental power needs to be enhanced in respect to their personal topic or problem,” Lumma says. “They [then] listen to the specific song which was written for this part of Pamela Levin’s cycle of power, and at the same time they are invited to express their ideas about it by painting with oil pastels, colored pencils or similar material.”

His method has resulted in overwhelmingly positive responses from his clients. In addition, Lumma’s former counseling students started to use the songs in their private practice work and as counselor educators.

But in August 2005, Lumma’s yearly plan to return to the vibrant, musical city he loved changed: Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city, resulting in nearly 1,500 fatalities and $105 billion in damage. Residents were reeling over the intense losses the storm left, and so was Lumma.

Looking to help in any way he could, Lumma eagerly accepted a proposal from local counselors to offer post-traumatic counseling to flood victims.

He provided art and music therapy to both children and adults. With music playing, Lumma invited clients, in groups of four to eight people, to draw pictures.

“I then gave them topics related to their personal situations,” Lumma says. “For example, ‘What do you think enabled you [to] survive in spite of the terrible circumstances after the hurricane?’ In this way, I asked them to share their power of resilience with one another, thus creating an opportunity for the sharing of experiences to begin. The effect has always been very successful in getting the discussions started.”

In the years since Katrina, he has found the drawings from hurricane survivors being recognized as effective tools for other people in distress, “whether it be from personal or professional experiences or both. Any client who is ready to re-decide his way of life, who feels that he or she needs support for special situations in his or her life, finds resilience from the Hurricane Katrina drawings, which we’ve been collecting in New Orleans since 2006. The drawings apparently have enhanced the resilience of those who produced them, thus achieving our goal of assisting victims to overcome their trauma and become more optimistic and productive in their future lives.”

Eventually, jazz harpist and New Orleans resident Patrice Fisher heard about Lumma’s efforts and asked him to collaborate — both musically and therapeutically.

“Since 2007, we’ve been involved in combining post-trauma counseling with her music in my portable studio of art therapy, in the United States as well as in Germany,” Lumma says.

The pair created an album called Resilience, which provides music therapy to the sounds of Latin jazz that Lumma and Fisher play together.

Lumma explains the cognitive reasons behind the success of art therapy, music therapy and other creative interventions in trauma counseling. “Artwork activates the right hemisphere of the human brain,” the side of the brain responsible for spatial abilities, facial recognition, visual imagery and music. “When adding music [and] painting to the counseling process, we can be sure to reach the person in a holistic way. This is effective in both normal counseling as well as with trauma clients. Giving topics to be painted — not only to be spoken about — reactivates subconscious recovery resources. The addition of our specially designed music with the harp, trumpet, guitar, bass and percussion gently rearranges the emotions and skills which were blocked by the traumatic experiences.”

Lumma suggests that counselors interested in using these kinds of interventions start by looking at the resilience drawings he has posted on the Institute for Humanistic Psychology’s website to see which one “gets through to your emotions.”

Counselors could then personally practice the intervention to get a better understanding of how it affects the human body, he says. “Only reading about how something might affect the client is not enough,” Lumma adds.

Use crayons and copy either part of or the entire selected image, Lumma says, “and enlarge it and add your very own colors to it. A logical next step to test the method would be to have [the counselor’s] colleagues do the same, and then compare their own experiences with the material.”

German publisher Windmühle Publishers of Hamburg is printing Lumma’s new book on resilience coaching. The cover of the book shows one of the pictures drawn by a group of four Hurricane Katrina victims.

Lumma believes that art and musical interventions should be further incorporated into the counseling profession and should also be included in counselor training and education.

“Adding nondigital interventions like music, art and artwork most certainly has a positive effect on the healing process,” Lumma says, “just as playing music and singing songs has a positive effect on the education of young children.”

He believes the focus on right brain activity is a big factor in why these nondigital interventions have had such a positive effect on healing in trauma survivors.

“If we regard our body as a whole, we are to realize that thinking only — or making decisions with the digital side of our brain, the left side, alone — has little healing effect,” Lumma says, “but including the right hemisphere makes our body understand that we are dealing with the given issue in a holistic manner, and that has a positive effect on healing.”

Heather Rudow is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at hrudow@counseling.org.

Processing personal grief as a professional counselor

October 18, 2013

Experiencing loss is an inevitable part of life, and counselors are trained to help others overcome these emotionally difficult events. But what do counselors do to process their own personal grief — and how can they ensure that their grieving does not impede on the therapeutic process of clients?
Eric W Cowan, a counseling professor at James Madison University and author of Ariadne’s Thread: Case Studies in the Therapeutic Relationship, says self-care is key. Cowan, a member of the American Counseling Association as well as the Virginia Counselors Association, told Counseling Today that counselors must constantly manage their emotional well-being, especially when suffering a personal loss, to ensure that they can successfully provide therapy to clients.

Do you believe counselor self-care has become more important within the profession over the years? If so, how?

My impression is that there has been a growing awareness that counselor self-care is central to providing effective counseling — at least we seem to talk about it more. The real question is, does this awareness translate into counselors creating for themselves the kind of balance in life that enables them to tend to their own mental health needs, especially in times of personal challenge or crisis? Are counselors being mindful that they must provide for themselves the kinds of self-enhancing experiences that they wish for their clients?

This takes a kind of discipline because counselors are subject to the same barrage of impersonal demands of a complex culture as everyone else. At the same time, counselors are subject to a whole set of very personal demands inherent in the intimate counseling process. Learning what it is you need to stay balanced and self-aware becomes very important.

Why is counselor self-care important?

Counselors have a unique challenge compared with other professions because the counselor functions as the very instrument through which he or she strives to be helpful and effective. Conceivably, a surgeon, an accountant or a car mechanic can be effective regardless of what is going on in his or her inner world or outer life — it is an easier job to partition that out from the task at hand. The counselor’s inner world of thoughts, emotions and interpersonal sensitivity are, however, the very tools he or she must utilize to be effective.

The counselor whose inner life is in turmoil or greatly out of balance is not only in danger of being less useful to the client, but also of importing his or her unmet emotional or spiritual needs into the relationship with the client. These countertransference enactments hinder the client’s ability to use the counselor to foster therapeutic growth. More insidiously, for some clients this dynamic with the counselor may reenact old traumas in which the client’s own developmental needs became subservient to an implicit demand to prioritize the needs of caregivers in crisis.

As counselors, we can also tend to build up a kind of psychic charge that has to do with this deep involvement in others’ emotional turmoil. This has to be discharged or expressed in some way, or you carry around all this tension and wonder why you are yelling at the dog.

When a counselor is suffering a loss in their family, what self-care steps should they take?

Robert Haas has a poem that begins with something like, “All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking.” I love that line because it reminds us that the experience of loss and the challenge of responding to great loss is inherent to loving others. We need to learn to live alongside loss because it is the rule and not the exception.

Counselors, especially, must learn to live with this idea because so much of what we do is to help clients move through great loss and attending grief. Of course, counselors do this by helping clients make room for grief in their inner life — to honor its place and give it a voice. Only then can a profound loss be taken in, accepted and ultimately incorporated.

When grief and loss come to the counselor, it challenges the counselor to this heightened level of attention and self-acceptance. The process may take up more space in the counselor’s thoughts and feelings than they would like, especially because counselors often imagine that they always have to “keep it together” and be a model of perfect mental health. The paradox is that by failing to fully honor a personal loss, the counselor’s grief may not move and transform, and transformation from a loss of something “outer” to something that you are able to hold within is where it’s at. That’s what you are after.

Being “out of balance” because one is not attending to pressing demands from within is different from the temporary imbalance and dislocation of attending to and honoring one’s profound feelings of loss.

How can counselors tell if their grief is hindering their ability to practice?

When counselors carry unresolved grief from old losses or when they are in a process of mourning from a recent loss, they are especially susceptible to problematic enactments with their clients. Most often this would show up as a loss of optimal therapeutic stance.

For instance, imagine that the client’s tears or expressions of grief elicit from the counselor not only a disciplined empathic resonance but also the counselor’s tears or expressions of grief in response. The client may begin to attenuate or even to hide his or her emotional responses. In other words, the client begins to adjust his or her expression of affect to accommodate the counselor’s ability to stay emotionally intact. This loss of the counselor’s ability to provide an adequate “holding environment” for the client’s affect is a sure sign that the counselor needs to attend to pressing emotional needs.

Less obvious is when counselors find they are compromised in their ability to be fully present with the client in the here and now because of distractions from upwelling emotions not related to the therapeutic session. At that point, it is a disservice to the client to try to tough it out, and you’ve got to do something to attend to yourself.

Is the way that counselors handle grief different, or do we all mourn the same way?

For counselors, it is tough to have to go through life always having to cultivate one’s self-reflective awareness. Garrison Keillor remarked that sometimes “you just have to stand up to reality and deny it,” but as appealing as this sometimes sounds, this is not really an option for someone who has committed to the counseling profession.

If counselors handle their grief differently, it is because they have come to the realization that each developmental task, each loss or transformation, involves a kind of death to an old self and the birth of a new and expanded self. Whether this death and reconstitution is in response to a loss of some person or a letting go and birth of something new from within, a new phase of personal development, it always involves some level of acceptance of loss and pain.

Perhaps it’s this letting go and not grasping to hold onto something familiar that ultimately fosters greater awareness. It’s that whole idea in Eastern philosophy that everything is in a state of flux, of passing, of impermanence and transformation. The counselor does not feel less pain in loss but is, perhaps, more likely to accept it as direct experience, less likely to turn that pain into neurotic suffering. That’s the attending part, I think. Not the frantic effort to avoid inevitable pain, but more an enhanced ability to carry it willingly and mindfully.

Should counselors use past experiences to help clients get through their own grief?

It is tempting for counselors, in an effort to create rapport with clients who are experiencing a profound loss, to reference their own losses and grief experiences, especially if they resemble the circumstances of the client’s loss. The intent is to communicate that “you can get through this as I have,” and “I have been there so you can relate to me.”

The danger in the counselor’s referencing his or her personal experiences of loss and grief is that it tends to take up emotional space that rightly belongs to the client. The client is temporarily obligated to understand the counselor’s profound experience of loss. The client may begin to wonder if his or her own expression of loss is hurtful or damaging to the counselor. In the worst-case scenario, the client may find that his or her loss cannot compete with the counselor’s or that the client feels a need to make the counselor feel better.

Counselors do use their past experiences to help clients get through their grief but not ordinarily by relating to the client the specific incidences or content of the counselor’s experiences. Rather the counselor’s experiences of loss inform the process and pathos of his or her empathy for the client’s specific losses.

What can counselors learn from experiencing a deep loss?

This experience of a deep loss strips us of trivialities. For a period we seem consumed in pain but also have a deeper sense of the profound and important. If the loss is tragic, as the death of someone we love by accident or suicide, then the loss may be shattering and it will take much attention and effort to directly grieve rather than become depressed.

But, sometimes, the experience of loss can awaken us to an enhanced and deeper awareness, what Martin Buber called the “infinite ethos of the moment.” Then we are more fully present to our existence and its potentialities, even though, or perhaps because, we see how fragile it is. Ideally, the loss allows us to participate more deeply in our relations with others. Or perhaps we experience what Buddhists refer to as impermanence, leading to a new openness to the flow of our existence, to letting go. The process of saying “Yes!” to life, open armed, even in the face of great pain or loss.

That’s the thing — you want to toss in the towel, but you still have to find a way to say “yes” to counter that nihilistic or fear-based impulse. This is what most of our clients are struggling to regain, and if the counselor can do it, then he or she can help others to do it as well.

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For more on this subject, read Counseling Today’s September Feature, Attending to countertransference.

ACA Participates in National Dialogue on Mental Health

October 15, 2013

On October 12, ACA participated in the Creating Community Solutions discussion on mental health. Convened by Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray, the town hall event was part of a national dialogue to promote solutions to the challenges faced by those with mental health issues. Over 400 invited individuals convened at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington DC, with participants ranging from middle school students to consumers to mental health professionals to mental health associations and facilities.

Presenters included Mayor Gray, Steven Brigham, the President of American Speaks; Dr. Joseph Wright from the Washington DC Children’s Medical Center; Councilwoman Yvette Alexander, the Chair of the Washington DC committee on Health; Stephen Baron from the Washington DC Department of Behavioral Health; and Dr. Dr. Paramjit Joshi from the George Washington University School of Medicine. The focus was on highlighting the importance of mental health, key challenges for mental health, supporting the mental health of our youth and young adults, and action planning for solutions.

Participants focused on the need to reach those in need as early as possible and to fight stigma; particularly the misconception that those with mental health issues are violent. The importance of bullying prevention was also addressed. Some key statistics presented included:

One in five in the United States experience a mental health problem every year but only 40% of these individuals receive services.
Only three to five percent of violent acts are committed by people with mental illness. However, 24% of Americans believe that people with mental illness are dangerous and 39% believe that they are unpredictable. Individuals with mental health problems are more likely to be victims than perpetrators.
Only 44 percent of Americans believe those with mental health problems can be successful in the workplace. However, studies show no difference in productivity.
Only 30 percent believe a person with mental illness issues can recover when, in fact, mental illness is eminently treatable.
Because of stigma, cultural issues, and language barriers, up to 50 percent of those with mental health issues do not seek treatment.

ACA’s input focused on the need for early assessment in schools through the funding of school counselors and the need to fund professional counselors in mental health settings to address the chronic under treatment of those with mental health issues.

For additional information on the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue on mental health, please contact David Kaplan, ACA Chief Professional Officer, at dkaplan@counseling.org

When disaster strikes twice: Helping Jersey shore residents cope

Heather Rudow October 11, 2013

(Kristi Funderburk/The Asbury Park Press/AP)

Nearly a year ago, historic “superstorm” Hurricane Sandy tore up the East Coast, claiming at least 117 lives in the U.S. and 69 more in Canada and the Caribbean, leaving an unthinkable path of destruction in its wake.

New Jersey was especially hard-hit: half of the city of Hoboken flooded, communities all up and down the shore sustained significant damage and, at one point, more than 2.6 million residents were without power. At least 34 people were killed in the state, and damages have been estimated at $29.4 billion.

In the town of Seaside Heights, the storm reduced its boardwalk from a famed tourist attraction to piles of wood and wrecked amusement park rides. Perhaps no image was more representative of the destruction than the now-iconic photo of Seaside’s JetStar roller coaster rolling out with the tide.

But just as life for those N.J. residents was perhaps returning to normal, a massive fire erupted along the Seaside Heights and Seaside Park boardwalks on Sept. 12, destroying more than 50 businesses. Adding insult to injury, it was revealed that the fire was caused by damage in electrical wiring under the boardwalk and subfloor that had first been compromised by flooding from Hurricane Sandy.

Now, those N.J. residents are left to deal with the first anniversary of the hurricane, compounded by the destruction of the recent fire.

On the anniversaries of disasters, an “anniversary effect” or “anniversary reaction” can impact primary survivors — those who directly experienced the disaster — and secondary survivors, or those who indirectly experienced the disaster through TV and other media outlets.

Karin Jordan, founder of the American Counseling Association’s Traumatology Interest Network, notes that anniversaries of disasters can already be difficult for survivors to process; adding another trauma or disaster event can make coping during this time even more difficult.

“These dates can mark a time of heightened vulnerability and psychological impact,” Jordan explains. “Anniversaries are difficult for disaster survivors as they are often a time of remembering the losses and rekindling the sadness, fear, anxiety and stress. Experiencing multiple disasters can be difficult and puts survivors at higher risk of having trouble dealing with the disaster event’s anniversaries.”

Jordan says traumatic events such as Hurricane Sandy tend to have a “desensitizing effect on the acquisition of coping skills for later disasters. For example, the fire [that] destroyed New Jersey’s boardwalk after a furious rebuilding effort subsequent to Hurricane Sandy left some of the populace with a sense of hopelessness, sadness and a range of other emotions, and [wondering] ‘Haven’t we gone through enough? What is going to happen next?’”

Juneau Mahan Gary, a counselor educator at Kean University, can personally attest to this. Gary, a member of the New Jersey Counseling Association, a state branch of ACA, lives off New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay, across the water from where the fire took place.

“From my deck, I can look at Seaside Heights, so I can see it every day,” says Gary, a N.J. native. “On that particular day, I was not home, but my husband and my neighbors were able to see the smoke rising from Seaside Heights.”

When Gary saw the fire and its destruction on TV, she felt “overwhelmed and speechless. My brain just couldn’t absorb what I was seeing, it was that overwhelming.”

Due to the fire’s massive size and a lack of working hydrants nearby, firefighters even pumped water out of Barnegat Bay to fight the flames. Watching the efforts upon returning home, Gary and her neighbors felt “sadness, disbelief and empathy.”

“We felt helpless that night,” she recalls.

However, Gary and fellow residents have been feeling this way for nearly a year.

“Even before the fire occurred, we still have, just a half mile from me, houses that are condemned, either because of the major destruction or the mold,” she says. “Some people are still dislocated, there are a number of houses that are for sale and some will [mention] hurricane damage. I suspect the houses are for sale because owners can’t make sufficient repairs.”

She describes it as a “double-whammy” for residents.

Jane Webber, former president of the New Jersey Counseling Association, says the sheer force of the blaze makes for an especially difficult recovery.

“Although the unpredictability and danger of hurricanes and floods are part of Jersey shore life, no one was prepared for the shock of the boardwalk inferno,” says Webber, a counselor in private practice and adjunct professor of counselor education at Kean University. “The Seaside Park fire was intense and terrifying, spreading rapidly to Seaside Heights, while residents and business owners heroically tried to protect buildings even after their own stores burned.”

Webber, a member of the ACA Crisis Response Planning Task Force and co-editor of the second and third editions of Terrorism, Trauma and Tragedies: A Counselor’s Guide to Preparing and Responding, says now is a “critical time for outreach counselors to support clients and to be available for those residents who may not have needed assistance after Sandy. The terrifying fire and the financial losses added to Sandy’s toll, testing our hope and endurance when the reservoir of resources has been depleted.”

Jordan agrees, recommending that counselors follow a treatment plan that includes “a structured interview to get a better understanding of the client’s trauma exposure, such as the magnitude, duration, whether they are an imminent risk to their self or others, previous trauma experiences, present level of functioning and their present support system.”

The goal of treatment, she says, is helping clients to “develop a cognitive frame of his or her own feelings, emotions and behaviors in order to be able to discriminate between disaster triggers and reality.”

The client needs to be supported in finding the appropriate language to describe the experience “so they can remember what happened and when the disaster struck without being emotionally charged and experiencing the trauma all over again,” with the ultimate goal of “making the trauma memory like any other memory through reconstructing [it] into a meaningful narrative.”

Webber finds active interventions to be helpful in lowering clients’ anxiety levels and suggests “taking a walk on the beach together or talking with clients as they work on repairs. Search the beach together for a worry stone to hold when they are feeling over-stressed. Decide together on one task to tackle and list steps and progress dates on the calendar to reduce confusion and stress when so much needs to be done.”

Gary says it’s important for counselors to know of referral sources and support groups providing free and low-cost services. Also important, she says, is for counselors themselves to offer pro-bono services for individuals and groups.

“Consult with local mental health agencies and schools to offer or co-sponsor psychoeducation sessions, counseling or special clinical supervision and/or consultation to mental health staff who work with affected clients,” Gary adds.

New Jersey Hope and Healing, a N.J. Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services-sponsored crisis organization, is a good place to start, Gary says. In addition, Gary created a free repository of websites that school counselors and school personnel can use to assist students.

It’s a counselor’s role to educate survivors and clients about common anniversary reactions and provide information for those who are not directly impacted by the disaster, Gary says.

It is also up to counselors living in affected areas to make sure they are in the appropriate mindset to assist others.

“Seek clinical or peer supervision or personal counseling as necessary,” Gary says. “Exercise, eat healthy, get rest, set limits and [learn to] say ‘no.’ Practice counselor self-care.”

Gary, a certified disaster response crisis counselor for the state of New Jersey, had to assess her emotional well-being when the hurricane hit.

“[Though] not significant, we suffered damage to our house,” she recalls, “and at that point, I knew I was too raw to help anyone. Those first two months, I needed to take care of myself and my surroundings. You need to … do your own self-assessment and ask, ‘Am I strong enough and ready to help someone?’”

Webber says counselors should be alert to changes in survivors’ behaviors and moods and whether “day-to-day tasks become more difficult or insurmountable. Watch for signs of depression, hopelessness or anxiety.”

Gary, Webber and Jordan say that counselors should be on the look out for some of the following reactions:

Denial of any emotional impact
Avoidance of discussing the hurricane or the fire
Inability to recall the event
Flashbacks and intrusive recall of the event
Anxiety, depression, fear that another hurricane or fire might happen
Depression or feeling easily overwhelmed
Anger over the loss of people, property and community
Changes in appetite (overeating or inability to eat)
Substance abuse and self medication
Nightmares and other sleeping problems

The difference between recovering from a natural disaster as opposed to man-made trauma is that, unlike other trauma, natural disasters do not typically involve human error.

“Although we are unable to change the course of natural events, we are spared the terror inflicted by mass violence,” Webber says. “As superstorm Sandy roared through towns, survivors were determined to outlast nature’s fury, comforted by the courage and compassion of neighbors who protected them from the hurricane’s path. On the anniversary, many will remember how they lived through Sandy, sharing stories of survival and affirming the resilience of the human spirit to endure the elements.”

Webber, a N.J. native who remembers riding her bike along the Seaside Heights boardwalk and working there as a teenager, says the determination and optimism of the state’s residents will help them cope.

“Residents pledge not to let this latest tragedy block the Jersey shore recovery,” she says. “The resilience and commitment of the community will sustain them to be ready for Memorial Day’s beach opening next year.”

Heather Rudow is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at hrudow@counseling.org.