Auckland floods, Cyclone Gabrielle: How to deal with anxiety caused by the weather – Kyle MacDonald

Mind Matters psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald answers your mental health questions.

Q I haven’t slept well since the Auckland floods. Our basement flooded and we lost a few things, but overall we were fine
the end. But we thought we were going to lose the house and were ready to evacuate but ended up not going. It was scary, but others have lost everything and I feel like I should just get over it. I keep having nightmares about the rising water and it interrupts my thoughts during the day. I can’t go downstairs without feeling incredibly scared. What should I do? I feel like I’m overreacting.

A The whole idea of ​​overreacting when it comes to emotions is weird and unhelpful. If you really step back and think about it, there aren’t too many emotions—you have the feelings you have, and in the end, every feeling we have is understandable, even necessary.

Given what you’ve been through, your feelings are certainly understandable. The fear of losing everything, and likely fear for your life and the well-being of your family, is terrifying and, dare I say it, traumatizing.

Trauma is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days – and sometimes too lightly. But if we take a moment to define it, a traumatic event is anything that causes you to feel like your emotions are overwhelming your ability to cope, usually large events that we fear our life or our safety is at risk. It tends to be defined by intense anxiety that takes time to process.

Think of it as a kind of emotional indigestion. When we get too big a chunk of emotion and we can’t digest it all at once, it can get stuck and we can struggle to digest — or process — the event and memory for some time afterwards.

When this stickiness lasts for some time—months and years, we call it post-traumatic stress disorder—or PTSD. But don’t worry, you’re still in the early days and weeks, and that’s actually a pretty common reaction. A post-traumatic stress reaction is uncomfortable, but not a disorder.

The hard part is not avoiding the feelings and taking the time to process and feel what you are feeling. And from what you’ve said, the idea that you’re “overreacting” or that others are worse off and therefore have no right to your feelings is a problem here.

Telling your feelings to stop, that you shouldn’t feel them, or that you don’t have a right to feel them is a form of avoidance — by trying to stop the feelings from existing. When it comes to experiencing, processing and letting go of feelings, as in this case, these reactions are disruptive.

If you can, gently expose yourself to the feelings. Sit in the basement with the support of family or close friends. Approach, do not avoid. Feel what you are feeling, cry, scream, sob, or freak out, but most of all, breathe. If it gets too much, back off, but keep it gentle.

Allow yourself to talk as much as you need to about what happened and how you were feeling with those who are listening. Often we feel like we need to talk to others who were there and get the story of what happened clearly in front of us, that’s okay too.

But overall, be compassionate and gentle with yourself. There is no competition when it comes to stress, and what you felt doesn’t have to be better or worse than the feelings of others.

It’s easy, and over time, probably fairly quickly if you approach it gently, this will become just another bad memory, not a traumatic one.