Are Fireworks setting off a fear reaction in you?
CALMING TRAUMA ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
For many in America, the Fourth of July is a time of celebrating our country’s liberty with beautiful light shows and BBQs.
For others, the sound of fireworks promotes a fear that transports them back in time to a moment when their lives the the lives of someone else were in jeopardy.
If this is your experience or the experience of someone you love, here are some strategies to understand what is happening in the brain and make this experience feel more like a celebration than a terror.
First of all, it is important to understand that traumatic memories are stored in the brain differently than other memories. Our bodies pick up on background sensory details often more than the sequence of events that happened. This means that if someone was in a state of threat, they may remember the sounds around them more than what happened. For this reason, a veteran might hear the sound of fireworks and experience a threat response similar to when they were in war because the sound of gunfire was encoded in their memory to protect them from future threats. The part of our brain responsible for rational thinking goes offline when we face a threat, so it is not very effective to say “it’s just fireworks,” because for that person, it isn’t.
Try this instead:
1. Ask the person to say out loud their name, where they are, and what day or time it is.
2. Try to make eye contact if the person is willing and try to focus them on physical senses in the present such as the air temperature or a smell that is soothing to them.
3. You can pre-emptively prepare by choosing not to participate in Fireworks shows or using noise canceling headphones.
4. As the person to remind themselves they are safe and orient to where they are in the present before going into a potentially triggering situation.
