It has been several years since anyone on our team was involved in counseling after a campus shooting, but today’s events at Fort Hood have brought a lot of memories back to a few of us. The most recent event in our life was the campus shooting at Northern Illinois University where the shooter left 5 students dead and 15 injured. We are told that we can be more vigilant, more observant, more focused and this will create safer environments, but how much safer could a place be than a military base?
This has all definitely come as a shock to many around the country, and those who reside or work at Fort Hood are sure to have many questions, many issues, and worse yet, post-event effects they may deal with for some time.
At the time these shootings occurred today, the clock began to tick and reactions to this tragic event will now begin to manifest themselves in those in and around Fort Hood as people both directly in the vicinity of the shootings and those distantly connected will begin to exhibit signs of emotional stress and trauma. These reactions are caused by cracks in the shell we create for ourselves- thin layers of confidence in institutions, places and people. For example, I have a layer of shell around my mind and heart that says that the Wood River High School is a safe place for my daughters to attend school. Another layer of that shell says that I can safely shop at WalMart, another layer says that because I live in the country, I do not need a security system on my house.
See, the layers add up and create this shell that we live in confidently. It enables us to function without being frozen by fear in a world wrought with violence.
When one or more of those layers is cracked, my assessment of my own vulnerability changes. I begin to worry, stress and even panic. The more layers that are compromised, the harder my mind has to work to overcome the fears.
In the case of those connected to today’s events, their shell has been horribly altered and perhaps shattered. Safety, once taken for granted, is now of the utmost importance, and while authorities hold the attackers in custody or the attackers have been eliminated, the fear now rises above all else…will it happen again now that it happened once?
Trauma is the sense that your world is coming apart. It often stems from seeing or experiencing something that is NOT SUPPOSED to happen. What I mean is, nobody is SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE to shoot up Fort Hood. A hurricane is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE to flood an entire state. A student is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE to enter my child’s school with a gun.
My fragile shell cracks, crumbles, and falls at my feet…trauma.
Often times post traumatic symptoms can last days, weeks, years and even lifetimes.
People need people, and it is through gathering that healing can begin. Vigils, gatherings, church services and memorials are all forms of people gravitating toward each other instinctively simply because people need people. Over the days ahead, we will see much of this at Fort Hood just like we did after the NIU shooting, Columbine, Paducah, Edinboro and Virginia Tech. The healing, while a gradual process, begins with the simplest of gatherings, sometimes physical, sometimes just emotional such as in the form of correspondence, a show of support or sympathy, and even a display of understanding.
While Fort Hood is a distance away, and as of the time I wrote this, it was determined that no Nebraska troops were killed or injured in this event, it is important that we lend a hand in the healing; gather, if you will, if only in spirit. A single individual effort by each of us would create a massive show of support by numbers.
Hang your flag out, blog your sympathies and prayers, Twitter your thoughts and words of encouragement. There is much we can do to say that we care, many ways that we can offer a hand to hold to those that were cut so deeply today.
