I de­cid­ed to write an ar­ti­cle based on what we have ex­pe­ri­enced this month. Many per­sons are still try­ing to pick up the pieces of their lives and homes af­ter the floods. The rainy sea­son has al­ready brought much dev­as­ta­tion to some parts of the coun­try.

Many Trinida­di­ans, will know the pain of los­ing every­thing they have, leav­ing they’re homes and prepar­ing to nev­er go back again. For those hit hard­est by re­cent rains, there is a long way to go be­fore the re­al heal­ing can be­gin. Re­cov­ery won’t hap­pen overnight, or even in a month, it will be a long, tire­some road ahead. The trau­ma of liv­ing through a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter is deep and ag­o­niz­ing and when the wa­ters re­cede, af­fect­ed per­sons will be­gin the clean up of their homes and neigh­bor­hoods.

What can they do to put their emo­tion­al lives back to­geth­er?

In­di­vid­u­als need to have the time to grieve loss­es and ac­knowl­edge their pain. The first step to heal­ing is to name what you are feel­ing- you can’t ig­nore the fear, anger, anx­i­ety or in­cred­i­ble sad­ness. Emo­tions are a vi­tal sum­ma­ry of our bod­ies’ re­ac­tions to life ex­pe­ri­ences. The alarm in your brain sends stress sig­nals through­out your body to alert you to po­ten­tial dan­ger or prob­lems. You can use those mes­sages most ef­fec­tive­ly if you put them in­to words and thoughts. It's im­por­tant to know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a nor­mal re­ac­tion to a stress­ful or po­ten­tial­ly trau­mat­ic event and the signs that in­di­cate you should seek ad­di­tion­al sup­port.

Nor­mal re­ac­tions

Feel­ing over­whelmed

Feel­ing numb and de­tached

In­abil­i­ty to fo­cus

In­abil­i­ty to plan ahead

Con­stant tear­ful­ness

In­tru­sive mem­o­ries or bad dreams re­lat­ed to the event

Sleep dis­tur­bances

Con­stant ques­tion­ing – "What if I had done x, y or z, in­stead?"

'Re­play­ing' the event and in­vent­ing dif­fer­ent out­comes in or­der to be pre­pared should it hap­pen again.

Be­yond a nor­mal re­ac­tion

If you ex­pe­ri­ence any of these symp­toms at any time, seek pro­fes­sion­al help.

A sense that the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal re­ac­tions are not nor­mal

Thoughts of end­ing your life or self-harm

Loss of hope, or in­ter­est in the fu­ture

Avoid­ing things that bring back mem­o­ries of what hap­pened to the point where you're un­able to car­ry out day-to-day tasks

Feel­ing over­whelm­ing fear for no ob­vi­ous rea­son

Pan­ic at­tack symp­toms: in­creased heart rate, breath­less­ness, shak­i­ness, dizzi­ness and a sud­den urge to go to the toi­let

Ex­ces­sive guilt about things that were or weren't said and done.

You can’t ig­nore alarm sig­nals from your brain by pre­ma­ture­ly fo­cus­ing on re­lax­ing, or putting the events be­hind you- you should be stressed in the im­me­di­ate ex­pe­ri­ence of a dis­as­ter. Once you’re through the im­mi­nent dan­ger, it still takes time for our brains to re­cov­er from the ex­treme stress. The first way to deal with these pro­tec­tive stress re­ac­tions is to rec­og­nize them as help­ful sig­nals. They be­come valu­able when we trans­late the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al dis­com­fort in­to a chance to pay at­ten­tion to what we can con­trol, even in painful, chaot­ic cir­cum­stances.

The sec­ond step to re­cov­ery, the most im­por­tant ac­tion you can take af­ter a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, is to pause and think. You will be able to trans­late the feel­ings of a stress re­ac­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly fo­cus on the one thing that is most im­por­tant to you in your life right now. No­tice that I didn’t sug­gest you fo­cus on how to solve the most press­ing prob­lems fac­ing you. That clear­ly is im­por­tant, but there is one thing, which has to come first be­fore any prob­lem can be thought­ful­ly an­a­lyzed and ef­fec­tive­ly solved.

When you think clear­ly about what makes your life worth­while, even for a mo­ment, this clears the mind and sig­nals your alarm that you are in con­trol. When the world around you is falling apart, this is the best way to bring your stress re­ac­tions back to a man­age­able lev­el. In times of cri­sis, we see the true spir­it of hu­man­i­ty. Peo­ple are risk­ing their lives to help. We’ve seen so many peo­ple will­ing to put their own lives on hold so that oth­ers can have the chance to re­build their own. This coun­try is strongest when we come to­geth­er.