Managing Stress in School Communities During Nuclear Reactor Meltdown Threat

One of the biggest concerns for our community is the sustained stress of the nuclear reactor and continued aftershocks and tremors. Psychologically I think this is more akin to a hostage situation, mining entrapment, or a volcanic eruption where the threat is constant and the stress unabating. Key in our management of this will be to acknowledge the facts and feelings of the situation, but at the same time to proactively sustain an internal locus of control for our community members. Since it’s so recent and so well publicized I’d think “Chilean Miners” on this.

I think the following recommendations informed by Murphy and Farley (1996) could be instructive as we may see our community go through something along the lines of the following stages of stress reactions.

• Startle/Panic – (I’d guess we are past this stage as we are settling into the stress of the situation and past the initial shock)
• Disbelief – “This can’t be happening” – “It will all be over soon” (Many people may be in this frame of mind)
• Hypervigilance and Anxiety – This can be from the first hours to the first days but would be characterized by fixation on minute details, heightened sensitivity to other stressors, and a tendency to view the situation in worst case terms – catastrophize the situation.
• Resistance – this may vary widely as people possess hugely disparate coping abilities but basically not accepting the situation but surviving.
• Depression/Despair (first weeks to months) – Loss of freedom, isolation, boredom can get to even those with the most solid coping abilities.
• Acceptance – Commitment to regain control and proactively manage one’s relationship to the situation.

What we can do…

• Remain calm (sounds obvious but panic will not help) initial focus on facts but accept and acknowledge feelings.
• Follow the recommendations set by the government for our area. (structure serves a purpose in the face of chaos and may keep us physically safer)
• Set-goals – given the situation what can we all be working on to keep things progressing (internal locus of control)
• Identify things we can do that we can control – it may be helpful to write a list of the things we can control and things we cannot. One hostage strategy I read was that even in captivity hostages sometimes play games like hosting “visitors” into their “home” (again internal locus of control)
• Keep our minds busy – keeping the mind active distracts from the stress and preserves sense of progress and purpose.
• Seek to understand the situation – not as an hypervigilance but as in knowledge is power. Deconstruct the situation, cognitive power-over strategy.
• Humor – Where possible maintain a sense of humor.
• Eat well and exercise – remember the running miner?
• Maintain hope – remember the spiritual aspects of the miners
• Actively use stress management strategies – tons of information on this on the web.
• Accept our feelings – OK we don’t want to dwell on them but at the same time we can’t allow ourselves to feel guilty or weak because we struggling. This is stressful so we need to allow ourselves to be human.
• Be tolerant of each other and our individual reactions to the stress and how we cope. Accept each for doing the best we can at the time.

Managing Panic

If individual people start to break down and panic under the weight of this, there are some very useful strategies like these or others that your school counselor may know (Spiral Technique, 5,4,3,2,1, Rainbow colors, and also some techniques from transactional analysis) where you can help people become grounded again. One thing you can teach people before panic comes about is to use isometric partner stretches to keep grounded. If people start to feel like it is too much, stretching with a partner (pushing against each other like in PE class) can do wonders to put us back in place.

I hope there is something in there that is useful to you. – AC

Adam Clark is a school counselor at Yokohama International School in Yokohama, Japan. Find out more at http://whoisadamclark.com/who-is

References

Murphy, P.J, & Farley, M.J. (1996). Hostage survival skills for cf personnel [Operational Effectiveness Section: Personnel Research Team]. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/30756704/Hostage-Survivial-Manual

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