The Day After
Half of the population’s favored candidate didn’t win. Today and for the next several months, half of our country is going to be reeling from the election results and the potential aftermath of the election may promote feelings of fear, confusion, disappointment, grief, helplessness, anxiety, anger, guilt and even diminished confidence in oneself or others.
International disaster experts and researchers have noted that Psychological First Aid (PFA) can help alleviate painful emotions and reduce further harm from initial reactions to disasters. The Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress published a number of tools years ago which help individuals recover in times of loss.
In order to help reduce distress for our broader society, we have modified these tools for the present circumstances.
Everyone can use PFA to help. Your actions and interactions with others can help provide PFA to people in distress, by creating and sustaining an environment of (1) safety, (2) calmness, (3) connectedness to others, (4) self-efficacy—or empowerment, and (5) hopefulness.
Consider the following suggestions:
Be helpful:
- Encourage Safe ways to express emotions: Listen to people who want to share their stories and emotions;
- Be calming, remember, that there is no wrong or right way to feel.
- Be calming and friendly and compassionate even if people are being difficult
- Do promote Connectedness: provide accurate information about the circumstances.
- Encourage Connectedness: Help people contact friends or loved ones
- Promote self-efficacy by giving practical suggestions that encourage people towards helping themselves and meeting their own needs
The experts discourage the following things which have been found to be unhelpful:
- Forcing people to share their stories with you, may decrease calming; listen if they talk but don’t press the issue if they don’t want to talk.
- Giving simple reassurances like “everything will be ok” often diminishes calmness and can anger others
- Telling people what you think they should be feeling, thinking or doing now or how they should have acted earlier decreases self-efficacy, and is not recommended.
- Telling people why you think things happened by giving reasons about their personal behaviors or beliefs also decreases self-efficacy as is not recommended.
- Making promises that may not be kept decreases hope and is unwise.
- Criticizing existing services diminishes hope and calming in our governmental system. We live in a democracy, with a constitution that has ideals and this allows for others to have differing but respected opinions.
In order for the people of our country to survive the results of this divisive election, we all have to work together.
There are many mental health professionals and additional resources available if you need a professional listener, www.psych.org.
This article is used from an original post by Michelle Cochran for the NeuroScience & TMS Treatment Center on 11-6-2024. The descriptions of Psychological First Aid come from documents prepared by Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS), Department of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814-4799, www.CSTSonline.org