I started to realize how chaotic a crisis makes organizations. I got a contact from the girl she told me as she entered the circus circus ballroom they are turning people back she asked me what she should do, I said go forward always make them tell you to their face that they don’t need. You.
When I arrived to the circus circus, I went for the ballrooms and the same guy was standing there telling people no one was needed anymore to turn back, so I kept going to the heart of the ballrooms, the president of harmony healthcare was there with a laptop saying loudly where are my therapists why is there no one here as he was staring at a laptop.
The girl I was looking for she was there, I was there, we were assigned to different sites to provide crisis response. I saw in the course of 4 days over 200 people.
I didn’t take it seriously coming in because I was sobering up but then as I kept going I kept seeing so many people and they were suffering so I cleared my entire case load for the week.
Therapists they know how to do therapy, they don’t know how to do crisis response. Crisis response is different than therapy. Crisis response is being there and giving people a sense of certainty and letting people the world is not falling apart, giving them a sense of stabilization so they can regain their bearings. In most cases when you do that people can re-establish themselves and thrive and because not everyone is the same and things effect us all differently after 7-10 days if they are still having problems then let’s talk it out.
Let’s figure it out. When I came back home from every day I became aware of 2 things, 1. How much the stress affected me every day, my body ached, all my muscles and all my joints even my feet hurt to walk on and all i did was sit in a chair and listen to problems and then respond.
The second thing that happened was that after listening to all the stories I would when there was a moment of silence and no one was around I would cry.
I remember one time after a session during the crisis I went to subway to get food, I went to order a sandwich, I was about to break down and cry so I ordered my sandwich then i asked for the bathroom because I was breaking down, I went into the bathroom and set a timer for 10 minutes. I was allowed to cry for as much as I wanted for 10 minutes but then after that was done, I had to move on with my life, so I did that.
After the week was over dealing with all those clients, I started having flashbacks from my military training, so naturally I drank a bottle of whiskey and texted messaged the girl I was trying to impress and I fucked it up. That’s what I remember from the mandalay shooting. Helping people, fucking up a relationship and getting flashbacks. Honestly, I’m glad I could be there for those people, I’m not sure I was always a resource because I was making it up as I went. But i’m glad I could do that for them.