Dealing with the psychological aftermath of floods

Stephanie Salter: Dealing with the psychological aftermath of rising waters

By Stephanie Salter
The Tribune-Star

The woman behind the desk was uncharacteristically tight and terse. If I didn’t know her, if I were some stranger who’d just come into her workplace for services, I might think, “Geez, what’s with her? Would it kill her to smile?”

But I do know the woman, so I asked a question that’s fairly common around these parts just now: “Did you get any flooding?”

Her shoulders sagged and she nodded. Then, in a rush, she began to describe the extent of the damage to her home and all her family’s possessions. As she recounted the scary evacuation the family had to make — one minute life was normal, the next minute water was rushing into her house — her eyes filled with tears.

I’m no psychologist, but I was pretty sure I recognized the signs of post-traumatic stress. I also realized that this woman’s experience was one of thousands in the Wabash Valley and south-central Indiana.

As the physical signs of the great flood of June 2008 begin to fade, so will the consciousness of those of us who were fortunate enough to only read and hear about it. The flood’s victims, however, may look like everyone else on the outside, but inside they will be coping for months with its disorienting destruction.

And that struggle just might make them crabby, spaced out, fearful or weird to the uneducated eye.

If only the Red Cross could hand out survivor buttons that say, “Bear with me — I was flooded.” Until then, Michael Urban, a clinical psychologist in Terre Haute, has kindly provided some of the common reactions people have to traumatic or deeply disturbing occurrences like the area’s recent devastating flood.

Urban also emphasized that, while coping skills and healing time vary among individuals, anything the rest of us can do to stay aware of (and sympathetic to) the tough place many of our neighbors will be in for some time can only help.

“Most of these folks will be managing their job and the rest of their life in addition to the aftermath of the flood,” he said. “You know, we often overlook it, but everybody had a life prior to this, and that life doesn’t stop.”
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