How Is Terror In The World Affecting You?

You may have awakened in the night last night, crying out.

You may feel hyper-focused on your surroundings. You may be more worried than normal about your kids. You may feel a knot in your throat. If you have a family member overseas, you may need to hear from them more often. Or if you have someone you love who is a police officer or in the military, you may all of sudden be more aware of the danger they face. Every day.

This is natural, given the horror that happened in Paris, or what seems to be the reason why the plane went down in Egypt.

If you have already experienced a trauma of some kind, where your world turned unexpectedly dark or unsafe, what has been happening may act as a trigger. Old flashbacks or nightmares, that were diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, might return.

This may be happening to you now.

But even if you have never had actual trauma happen to you, you can still develop these symptoms. You may steer clear of crowded places or avoid air travel. It doesn’t take going through something traumatic to develop intense anxiety. It sometimes can only take hearing about it, or maybe watching video.

The reality of not being in total control of the next moment, and what zealous hatred can actually do, may thrust you into a clinical state of anxiety, whether it’s panic disorder, phobia, social anxiety disorder or actual PTSD. We, in the United States, have already had multiple school shootings, and have already heard of senseless killing after senseless killing.

Sometimes it’s too much.

Please pay attention to what is happening in your mind, heart and soul.

If you do become overly anxious, or are not yourself anymore, you don’t have to suffer alone.

There are mental health practitioners who specialize in the treatment of anxiety.  Sometimes talk therapy is enough. But specialized techniques like hypnosis and EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing can also be extremely healing.

You can’t help your children if you can’t help yourself.

They will need to hear from you whether or not they should be afraid. If your thinking isn’t rational, then what you tell them won’t be rational either.

We are all grieving what happened to people who had no clue that November 13, 2015 was going to be the last day they lived. People who were going about, living normal lives.

Grief can be angry, sad, disbelieving, or paralyzing. Those are normal things.

If it becomes entrenched, or these recent events begin to overshadow your feelings of hope or well-being, then please, ask for help.

We will all be praying for the victims, their families and friends, and one another.

 

You can hear more about mental health and many other topics by listening to my podcast, SelfWork with Dr. Margaret Rutherford. Subscribe to my website and receive one weekly newsletter including my weekly blog post and podcast! If you’d like to join my FaceBook closed group, then click here and answer the membership questions! Welcome!

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