[Audio] On Sounds Good, Tracy Ross and Dr. Michael Bordieri discuss the Orlando night club shooting from a mental health perspective.
In the wake of tragedy, Brodieri says it is common to feel upset, threatened, shocked, and outraged.
“One of the first things [necessary to cope] is giving yourself permission to have the feelings and responses you’re having… There’s not something wrong with you. This is what being human is,” Bordieri says.
Bordieri says sometimes when tragedy strikes it can be easy to fall into unhealthy patterns, like skipping meals, abusing drugs and alcohol, and obsessing over the event. While it’s important to give yourself time to process the tragedy, he says it is also important to take care of yourself by doing things in your everyday life that are important to you.
Volunteering or contributing can be way to help yourself psychologically heal, Bordieri says. “We saw that in people who were waiting in line for hours to give blood at Orlando in the days after the shooting,” Bordieri said.
Even if you’re not geographically close to a tragedy, Bordieri says contributing to your own community can help you move forward.
“When something horrible like this happens, the natural responses of fear and outrage are there and those can very quickly lead to feelings of hatred and othering,” Bordieri said.
This response is known as mortality salience, Bordieri says, a natural psychological process where people identify more with people like themselves when confronted with death. Bordieri says increased prejudice and stereotypes against people who don’t share the same beliefs, identity, or religion are also part of mortality salience.
“I think it’s really important in a time like this to think about that. Because that response comes automatically,” Bordieri said. “But you can challenge yourself and you can find ways to try to connect and to try to fight those natural inclinations to, perhaps, start othering or start pushing aside groups of people.”
Bordieri says there has been research into the practice of empathy and perspective-taking as a more positive way of coping with tragedy and loss.
“So, can we take the perspective of Muslims across the world and recognize that, perhaps, the actions of this one individual are not the actions of all of that group… But also try to really get a sense of what feelings might be there. And be willing to sit with your own responses when you look at folks who might be different from you who are also affected by this tragedy,” Bordieri said.
Bordieri says going against our instincts to push away others is difficult but can be a powerful response. He says new research shows when people take perspective, “they show less errors related to prejudice. They show more openness.”
