The Flood with Support

A few years ago I took a training to learn EMDR, an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This modality is well-researched and highly effective in healing almost all psychological symptoms. It's fairly miraculous to watch and experience personally. Problems I thought for ten years we could only manage I now see as actually healable.

Part of the training involves participating in some EMDR ourselves, utilizing low-impact events. Low-impact events are somewhat disturbing, but not overwhelming. As I dug through my personal history to find low-impact events to process, I realized I'd been through something that most people would likely consider traumatic, but I felt generally positive about it.

On Memorial Day in 1984, the city of Tulsa, OK received fifteen inches of rain in eight hours, much more than the city's waterways could handle. My entire neighborhood flooded with four feet of water in the middle of the night. I was five years old, my brother was two.

I remember my dad waking me up and telling me to climb on his back. He happily said we were going to Glenn's house. Glenn was my next door neighbor and friend who had one of the only two-story houses on our block. It was raining outside and a little thundery, as he sloshed through the front yard with me riding piggy-back.

I was so excited! A sleepover at Glenn's! And I was going to get to sleep upstairs! I remember (not sure if this part is accurate) looking out the back window in the morning to see water all around our houses, with a man on his roof behind Glenn's house. The Red Cross came and I got to eat my first-ever Egg McMuffin. It was an incredible and fun adventure.

My only real sadness of the entire memory was walking back into my home a few days later, seeing things wet, dirty and mostly destroyed. It didn't smell good. I don't remember much of the cleanup. I never felt the stress of the financial burden. I didn't worry for my safety or my family's safety. My home was eventually restored to the brand spankin' new 1984 style. I stayed friends with Glenn. I got a new cat who had also survived the flood that we named Noah.

While my parents likely have a very different memory of this, it still remains for me a very positive one. They did an incredible job supporting me during the experience. They shielded me from the things that would have been too overwhelming for me to handle. They helped me to have fun, (perhaps unintentionally) signaling to my brain that I was safe because I was with them and they were good resources for me.

My parents did exactly what parents should do for their kids in a hard situation. They supported me well. They acknowledged the difficulty. They anticipated the fear. They provided resources and protection. This is what kept that experience from being traumatic for me. Not that there wasn't danger, but that I had what I needed in the midst of it.

When we think about healing from trauma and preventing it, it's important to consider what support is needed. Humans are famously resilient. We can survive a lot and adapt well, but we need support from each other. Life can be so hard. Who do you know that is currently struggling? What could you do to support them? If you are the one currently struggling, what can you do to access the support you need rather than waiting passively for it to appear?