If you've suspected that sending in the "grief counselors" after every school tragedy might be doing more harm than good, you might have been right:
Talk it out. That's the first advice most victims are given in the wake of trauma. Conventional wisdom would suggest that burying one's emotions after a violent incident — such as a school shooting or terrorist bombing — will only lead to deeper anxiety later on. Yet, while mental health practitioners widely subscribe to this truism, it has rarely been tested outside a laboratory setting — past studies have found a lack of convincing evidence to support the use of psychological debriefing to mitigate trauma — and some experts think the theory doesn't hold up in every situation.
I've never been demonstrative, and I've been told all my life that I needed to "let things out" or "talk them through," that I was doing myself harm by keeping everything all bottled up inside. Now I have my response: Nyah, nyah, nyah.
Comments
Let's talk about why you feel that way.
If all these "practitioners" would hae practiced a bit MORE, they'd realize that people do NOT all grieve in like manner, time or expression.
Maybe THAT'S why we ALL are a tad "different?
Just goes to show that another "cookie-cutter" solution to a NON-cookie cutter problem is rarely the best way to go.
You go, Leo!
;)
B.G.