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Education > Our Community Education Services
What to Expect When the Unexpected Happens
When the unexpected and unwanted happens, older adults have the advantage of maturity and wisdom. You can identify
the strengths and supports that have helped you manage difficult times in the past, and draw on those strengths.
However, frightening experiences now may also remind you of past frights and traumas. Those memories
may increase your stress and trigger unwanted responses. These are normal responses in frightening situations.
Some Normal Responses to Expect in Frightening Situations
These responses may include:
- Worrying about yourself and those you care about
- Feeling confused, even disoriented
- Feeling sad, angry, and vulnerable, or “numb”
- Feeling vulnerable
- Having difficulty concentrating or remembering things
- Having difficulty sleeping
- Physical symptoms
They may also include:
- Not wanting to participate in your usual activities
- Changes in your habits – eating, drinking, smoking
- Not wanting to make decisions or wanting others to make them
- Increase in illnesses you have including depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder or other mental illnesses
- Unexpected memories of previous loss or traumas in your life
These are all normal responses to highly stressful and frightening situations. Each person responds in his or her own way and returns to their own sense of “normal” in their own time.
Returning to your own sense of what is “Normal”
Coping well with difficult situations requires some advance planning and preparation.
Preparation includes physical preparation (e.g., having supplies on hand and an emergency
bag prepared if evacuation is necessary) to other types of planning.
Planning includes having contact numbers for friends and family, and information about physicians and medications
organized and handy. It includes knowing where to get information and how to contact emergency services.
Detailed preparedness checklists are available from many sources including:
The Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/0,1082,0_319_,00.html
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA)
http://www.samhsa.gov/
If you are responsible for the care of others – adults, children, pets, plan for how you will care for them during emergencies.
It is essential to plan for your own emotional health as well.
Coping in the Aftermath of Disaster
The following is adapted from NMHA “Coping With Disaster: Tips for Older Adults”:
- Stay connected to friends and family to increase feelings of safety and security and reduce feelings of isolation and vulnerability.
- Talk about your feelings with friends and family. Putting feelings into words reduces stress.
- Take care of yourself. Remember to eat well, get your usual amount of exercise, sleep, take your medications, and keep appointments if possible.
- Ask for what you need. It is ok to ask for assistance – physical assistance, medical assistance, emotional support, and in some types of emergencies, financial support.
- Think about the things that have help you through difficult times before, and rely on those again. Some people find comfort in
listening to music, reading a book, taking a walk, or helping others.
- Keep a journal. Even if you never share it with anyone else, this is a powerful way to reduce feeling anxious.
(Research tells us that). Journals can be written, recorded on a tape recorder if you have one, or on a computer.
Sharing your thoughts via e-mail with younger members of the family is also a powerful way to stay connected and
at the same time create a written family history.
- Control those things that you can.
- Be connected to your community – through a community center, place of worship, or other place you feel comfortable.
If you are able to, volunteer to help others. Sharing your life-long experiences of how you coped with difficult times may
be especially valuable to children. Remember, they are in the process of learning that they can cope with difficult times, and
developing their own ways of becoming resilient. You have valuable lessons to share.
- Join a support group. Perhaps there is one at a senior citizens center, place of worship. Community organizations may have
organized support groups. Check with the Mental Health Association or the county’s Department of Community Mental Health to learn about support groups.
- Return to as much of your usual routine as possible, as soon as you are able to. However, if time passes and you
are not feeling better, you may want to talk with someone who is trained to help individuals deal with worries.
Your physician or clergy person may be helpful. Mental health professionals trained to help people cope with very
stressful times are available throughout Westchester to help. To find someone for you to talk to contact
the Mental Health Association of Westchester, or the Department of Community Mental Health.
- If you have had a traumatic experience earlier in your life, or if you have a mental illness, you may choose to
speak with a mental health professional as a precautionary measure.
- Expect that you may experience an “anniversary reaction” – a recurrence of the feelings at the anniversary of
the event. This is expectable and normal. Anticipating that it may happen, and using your coping s
trategies (all of the above) will reduce its impact.
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