(http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/lifestyles/352222,3_5_EL23_GRIEF_S1.article)
It's become a familiar phrase soon after young lives are taken unexpectedly and violently: "Grief counselors were on hand."
But what can they offer?
Mostly, counselors try to reassure those close to a traumatic event that others are experiencing similar feelings and reactions. At the same time, they need to make sure each person understands that all kinds of reactions and emotions are OK, and that everyone grieves at a different pace.
From survivors, "the main question we get is, 'Am I going crazy?,'" said Ursula Weide, a trauma and grief therapist in Virginia. "Providing information about what is happening with them provides a lot of relief," she said, because they realize they're "having a normal reaction to an abnormal experience."
Counselors also suggest ways survivors can help each other, encouraging them to gather regularly in small groups to perform a comforting ritual, for example.
"Sing a song in the morning or pray -- whatever rituals are appropriate to the group," she said.
They can remind survivors that they will be able to work through the trauma, but also should prepare for symptoms to return at a later date.
Different people require different kinds of counseling, said J. William Worden, author of Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, a well-known training manual for counselors. He said approaches can be different for two types of counseling -- grief counseling and "critical incident stress debriefing."
"For those that have lost a loved one or friend, grief counseling may be necessary or useful to them," Worden said. "But generally what we find is that in a violent event, they need to deal with the trauma pieces before they deal with the grief."
And not everyone wants to talk, either.
Rather than forcing people to discuss their experiences in detail, counselors should be "giving them permission to talk about these horrible events, and an opportunity to externalize those thoughts and images," said Tom Ellis, director of the Center For Grief, Loss and Transition in St. Paul, Minn.
But detailed discussions of the incident may not help everyone in the first days after a crisis.
"In the past, there was this sense you had to rush in and do things very quickly and intensely very soon after an event," says Lawrence Bergmann, psychologist and founder of the South Carolina-based Post Trauma Resources. Now, he says, "there's even research saying if you wait just a few days it might not be a bad thing."
Memorial services and small gatherings, such as the ones taking place in Blacksburg, Va., after the student shootings, create opportunities for useful communication, Bergmann said. They allow people to process a traumatic event at their own pace.
It's particularly important that counselors not expect survivors to recover on a given schedule, Weide said.
"Giving specific time frames and talking about specific reactions people should have," is not helpful, she said. That can make people believe they're having problems if they don't keep to a schedule.
It's also important that counselors, who may be personally affected by the crisis, keep their feelings in check, said Judy Rossbach, a therapist and survivor of the 2003 California wildfires.
"After the fires, I had to tell my crisis counselors, 'Don't tell your story. Listen to theirs,'" she said. "Tell them, 'Yes, I've been through it, too.' But that's it. Just listen. They need to tell their stories."
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