As we see families torn apart in the Middle East and in Ukraine it is important to be ready to know what those going through trauma need. It may be most important to honor the sequence of what they need.

I always keep in mind that people survive in their own ways. Emily Dickinson wrote, “After great pain– a formal feeling comes.” That reaction is one possibility to consider. You could find someone cleaning our their own closet when the tragedy is asking them to go and clean the pantry and the fridge of a beloved parent that died suddenly of a heart attack. This type of formality is a holding pattern. It is a way for the dysregulated nervous system to feel productive while a situation has nothing but disorder and chaos.  Doing something cold, detached, and a step removed from the fire inside your mind feels essential. Family may come in and try to redirect behaviors that seem to be rote and robotic for the person in pain.  Try to consider that this determined formal behavior is buying them some hours until they feel the stamina to face emotions and realities that are very shattered.

The origin of the term “Talking Day”

One common response, especially to mass shooting events, is to need to tell a trusted bystander (or many friends and bystanders) exactly where you were when the trauma occurred. First responders dubbed this 24 hour period after a tragedy “the talking day” for this reason.  Read the poem that explains how the term was coined in a news report about a mass shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007  here.

Why did students need to relive their ties to the 32 victims?  Why did they need to detail what building they were in and the sounds or sights they witnessed directly?   This is an important part of healing.  The brain can not easily take a shocking event and fold it into a logical time line.  History is shattered like a mirror with a thousand shards of brittle glass.  The mind is hard wired to make things make sense.  Our brains function to make sense of the data in our world.  We do this by naming a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion to an event.  With complex trauma or complicated grief this process is far more layered and difficult. Facts are delayed or missing all together.  Often it is so confusing that the bystander will begin to make “sense” of the tragedy by ascribing blame to themselves.  This is a small corner of the broken scene before them that they can try to control with guilt and responsibility.  They build theories like, “the world would be better off if it had been me in the accident.” or “if I had driven to school that day my friend wouldn’t have been at the park and ride parking lot where the violence broke out.”

The brain is scanning for cause and effect. It is cycling through logical options but the scene is totally irrational.  Most of the time motives and causes are not clear even with forensic examination or in a trial that takes place a year after the event.  

Why It is Kind to Stay Present During the Talking Day?

It is helpful to have someone catch all of the random ideas that are floating around in the mind of the victim of trauma.  It is not time yet to put the ideas through a stress test.  The person likely knows they are grasping for meanings that just aren’t validated by facts.  Let them say them, Let them know that you imagine this event triggers other losses and it will be a long time before they feel like “themselves.”  More than asking for compliance to any new action or belief, it is good to say,  “The rollercoaster you are on is going to be how it goes.  I can witness all of the ups and downs and curves and turns.  I am just going to be here to listen.”