October 20 – “Normal responses to an abnormal event”

I went back to the classroom yesterday.  I had to drive up into Texas and deep into Friendswood to get to a class I signed up for called Psychological First Aid.  It is a new “strongly suggested” class for anyone on the Critical Incident Stress Management teams across the state.  As it turned out, the basic information in the class textbook was all included as a fraction of the general fire chaplaincy course I took several years ago.  I even had an app on my phone that I had pretty much forgotten about that has all the information in “nutshell” form. 

That doesn’t mean the class wasn’t helpful by any means.  Of course any update or refresher course is good to keep the important stuff fresh in your mind.  And in this case there were fire fighters and police officers from all over the county and beyond, so lots of networking was going on.  I was at a table with a fire fighter from Houston who was one of the team leaders of their CISM team, a sheriff officer from Brazoria County and a patrol officer from Nassau Bay who was working on a master’s degree in psychology.  There were folks from the Texas Department of Corrections, as well as several community services representatives.  It was quite the diverse group.  The teacher was a BOI who still lives in Galveston, so we had something in common right off the bat.

The point of the class was to prepare us for situations where we might be a part of a team brought in to assist in the event of a tragedy, such as Hurricane Ike or an explosion like happened in West, Texas, a few years ago.  We went over some of what seemed to me to be common-sense approaches to dealing with people who are dealing with the extreme shock brought on by the disaster, whether it be loss of a home, loss of a loved one, or even just confusion about what to do next.  We even acted out a scenario of a disaster relief station.  I got to play one of the victims.  Problem was, the first place I was sent?  The FEMA table.  Not a good choice for a Galveston Ike survivor.  I played it out like I saw many times back in 2008.  Distrust.  Anger.  Walking away.  The ones playing FEMA workers even got frustrated beyond their ability to handle it.  They started promising luxury RV’s and immediate checks; all we had to do was sign our name that we accepted their terms.  Way too real for me. 

The essence of the course in one sentence would be that people are just having normal responses to an abnormal event.  It’s hard to see that when you are the one in the throes of the “abnormal event.”  Like I said, lots of what we did brought back memories of when we were on that side of the coin after Hurricane Ike.  Gave me a lot of perspective, at least. 

Galatians 3:22 says, “But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.”

Father, thank you for training opportunities like this one.  Helps keep a lot of things in perspective.  Amen.