Los Angeles is a place that my body and emotional feel these days. For tens of thousands of displaced people, the routine is almost impossible. Others continue to be a clear change in their daily lives.
However, this does not mean that there is no heavy internal struggle.
How can you understand the fact that a large part of our city has been destroyed, destroyed and sad while it remains a large majority that did not touch?
It is a confusing and failed time, and it is, above all, unfair. Smoke and ash in the air, as well as the guilt of the survivors, leaving a lot not sure how to act or sadness.
“All you say it seems wrong to say,” says Shannon Hunt, 54. A teacher of art, her workplace, went to the Avicon School of Leaders.
“Every time I cry, every time I feel shrinkage, I think I don’t deserve it, because another person has worse,” says Hunt. “This is stupid, intellectually. I understand that this is not true, but this is what you feel, because these other people have no pictures of children or Christmas jewelry and they are people I love. How can I complain?”
The guilt of the survivors, the experts warned, for many will be the new normal. I felt that, as one thought shook my mind in the past two weeks when I left my place: I do not deserve this. I tried to go to the spaces where I repeat the condolences, but I left, because comfort and enjoyment, fully frankly, felt that she was inappropriate at this moment.
It actually indicates that you have a great deal of sympathy. Most of us do not want to express our suffering when others suffer from more because we do not want them to feel bad. So he says something about us if we feel the sin of the survivors. She says we care a lot.
-Karis Tekinner, the co -owner of complementary therapy in California in Pasadina
Mary Frances O’Connor, a sorrow researcher and author of the book “Sadness: A surprising science of how to learn from love and loss, says” I hit the nail on his head there. “The guilt of the survivors is, in many ways,” I do not deserve this. I do not deserve to watch. “
Ocannor introduces the concept of “shattered assumptions”. She says the term “is something that we use a lot in loss and sounds” and deals with our daily beliefs – how life, world and people generally work.
“Events, such as loss and shock, are destroying these assumptions,” says Okonor. “It is not that we are never developing new ways to think about the world, as it takes some time to address questions like,” What do I deserve? “The process of having to stop and consider those questions that we had not done before, because there was no entire Los Angeles neighborhood burning.”
Acknowledge what you feel
Chris Tenner and Andrea Marie Stark are romantic and professional partners, where they are grateful for integration treatment in California, Pasadina. Tickner says that the residents of Altadena who survived their home even though everything is surrounded by a destroyer. As the remedies, they now find themselves in a strange situation, in an attempt to address the guilt of their sadness and their survivor while they are doing the same thing with their customers.
The first step, as Tickner says, is its normalization.
“It is actually indicating that you have a great deal of sympathy,” says Tickner. “Most of us do not want to express our suffering when others suffer from more because we do not want to feel bad. So he says something about us if we feel the surviving guilt. He says we care a lot, to the extent that we are ready to be a portico and not express ourselves.”
To start treating the sin of the survivors, it helps, as experts say, not only to be at risk but recognition and dismantling with our instinct to rid the system of the suffering of the layer. The initial step to be taken is just understanding what is happening better.
Los Angeles forest fires are an impossible catastrophe, and whether you have been severely affected or relatively safe, it is expected that the feeling of surviving guilt will be. We all, after all, we feel a loss given to our societies and our city will be irreversibly changed. However, our tendency is to continue and calm. A friend even warned me against writing this story, and wondering whether it was “problematic” to admit that I was suffering when I was not displaced.
“The truth is that a lot of tragedy exists all the time,” says Jessica Zaeem, a leader who licenses marriage and family therapist with the Los -Root of the treatment. “Our heads were buried in the sand, saying:” Just focus on me, “I don’t think it is the right approach.”
The fact is that many tragedy exists all the time. Our heads were buried in the sand, saying, “Just focus on me,” I don’t think it is the right approach.
Jessica Zaeem, a licensed marriage and family specialist with La root to raise treatment
To anyone, it is isolated. “Everyone, regardless of what they lived, began his session by saying:” I am very lucky. I have no right to file a complaint. “This really wanders in my mind. Group experience at the present time – the guilt of the survivors leaks to every conversation we conduct. It is normal. But it is also paralyzed. ”
Turn your attention abroad
Diana Winston, Director of the University of California at Los Angeles at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that the guilt of the survivors is a “constellation of feelings” – “despair, despair, guilt, shame”. The longer the period of sitting with them, especially shame, the more we reserve them for discussion. Winston recommends a simple vigilance trick called the rainy method, which is an abbreviation that symbolizes “identification, allowing, investigating and care.”
Think about it, in some way, as a guide for beginners to meditate. “I think people, without the background of the mind, can work a little with rain,” says Winston. “This is what I feel, and it is okay to feel this feeling. It makes my stomach hold and I can breathe and feel a little improvement.” Anyone with little self -awareness can do so. “
Just take a moment to focus with attention on the last side, “upbringing”. “Many people feel guilty, fear and panic, and what we can do is to turn our attention to others,” says Winston. “It tends to help people not lose their interaction.”
Exercise, like rain, can also help us express our emotions and exchange, which is an indivisible. Do not raise them. This can lead us to a nihilistic place to feel as if nothing is important, or our sadness rushes to a degree that becomes part of our identity. A leader says that the housing in things can inspire resistance to abandoning guilt if we do not live in our memories daily.
O’Connor says to think about what researchers refer to sadness as “dual operation model”.
“When we are sad, there is a loss and a restoration to deal with it,” says Okonor. “Restoration can continue and help our neighbors. We need a moment to drink a drink and cry and speak with someone who embraces us. The key to mental health is the ability to do the two things, return between the building and remember. People who are more flexible are the ones who can do them.”
Take the smallest possible step towards comfort
It is also important to admit what we can at this moment.
“There should be a warning,” says Tickner. “Practicing the mind now is really difficult.”
Hunt says friends recommended that they take a moment in herself. This is not possible. “One of the friends was like,” I had a pass to the day of a spa. Perhaps you can take it and relax.
The restoration and help of our neighbors can reach. We need a moment to have a drink and cry and talk to someone embraces us.
-Mary-paranches O’connor, researcher and author of sadness
In such cases, California Integrative Therapy Stark says, simplifying it. “Talk to friends, talk about what you feel, write, make art, and listen to music,” says Stark. Then, of course, go out and be part of the community. Volunteering can be particularly comfortable.
And when friends provide help, accept them.
“We are staying in a friend now, and their neighbors have come and said:” We have made a lot of pasta, “Stark says. Do you want some? “And I started saying,” No, no, no, I can’t take. “Then I heard myself saying,” You have to accept. So I said yes, and they came with the beautiful Ziti and the atmosphere was warm and beautiful.
“Please, say yes to anything that people offer you,” said Stark.
Say yes, write, wear music and volunteer if you can-easy advice, as Stark says, but with long-term health benefits.
“Every time you practice such a practice, you literally open a new nervous pattern in your mind that expands your selfishness and ability and all the wonderful word that we use” flexibility “.