Shock!
“Treat for shock and send for a doc.” That was the theme song of everyone who taught first aid and dealing with trauma. How do you do that? Remembering my experiences of trauma, I wanted to be reassured, surrounded by warmth and care and bundled up in a warm blanket.
This is my third post on grief and mourning. There are several models for the stages of crisis, but they all begin with the need to “Treat for shock.” How does shock strike us?
We experience shock as stress. If our loss is critical to us, we may experience the stress as overwhelming. Physical shock I will leave to the doctors. There is not much we can do about it, except be up to date with our first aid. We experience psychological shock as a threat to our existing structures. Our sense of reality may well experience the shock as debilitating. We may be immobilized, frozen in place.
One morning my son and I were on the way into the city and were caught in a freezing rain storm. The roads were a glare of ice and we crept along slowly. That day we counted 15 vehicles in accidents or in trouble because of the ice. At the top of a hill outside our community we saw another accident. A man driving a small truck had driven off the road and ended up on a shelf of rock. He was frozen to the wheel staring straight ahead. Clearly he was in shock.
Emotionally we may experience shock as panic, anxiety and a profound, unexpected sense of helplessness. Shock is so overwhelming that our thinking is disturbed. We may be unable to plan, to reason or to understand the situation.
I remember coming home one night when I came on an accident. The driver of a car had hit the back of a poorly marked truck. The driver stood there confused, frightened, and very worried. He did not know what to do. Our first step was to get him into a warm car and call the police. His confusion and uncertainty continued even after the police arrived.
This is a brief overview of what I like to think of as the first stage of crisis. Anyone recognize their experience? Any advice for the rest of us?
January 24th, 2006 at 10:11 am
[…] ges of dealing with a grief or a crisis. The first two stages I talked about were those of Shock (which we perceive as overwhelming), and Denial (where we attempt to avoid reality). Now […]