Page 14 - FOR BRAVERY 01 SEP 2020 v1_Final

AUSTRALIAN BRAVERY ASSOCIATION | Page 14

Coping in These

Unfamiliar Times

PAM DAVIDSON BM

Let’s be honest, living in 2020 hasn’t been
smooth sailing. This year has been
punctuated by bushfires that ravaged many
states, a global pandemic, economic

distress and uncertainty, and the list goes
on.
Pamela Davidson BM is a qualified professional
In times like these, it’s natural to be feeling a counsellor and the ABA’s Honorary Psychologist.
mixture of exhaustion, rage, disgust, despair,
desperation, hyper-vigilance, anxiety and grief. Depending on your personal proximity to one or more of
these tragedies, you may be experiencing signs of moral injury and/or symptoms of post-traumatic stress
(PTS). If you have experienced any life-threatening event previously in your life, (as many of us have as ABA
members) then these feelings even if resolved, can come back at these times.

Moral injury and PTS are closely connected to one another. Both involve an event, series of events or set
of circumstances experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening. This
experience creates lasting adverse effects on your physical, emotional or spiritual well-being. In essence,
the experience changes you and causes you to question sometimes long-held beliefs about human nature,
right and wrong, fairness and justice, big-picture meaning and the role that they “coulda/shoulda/woulda”
had in preventing bad things from happening.

While a diagnosis of PTS involves the additional presence of specific symptoms related to experiencing a
traumatic event, moral injury can be just as distressing. When stressors accumulate and layer on top of one
another, as they have been this year, many people are left to grapple with both concrete and existential
questions related to “why” and “what if?”

Why me? Why my community? Why was this allowed to happen? Why hasn’t anyone
intervened by now? What if things continue to spiral out of control?
What if it doesn’t get better?

Such questions are natural to consider during times of adversity, but the emotional real estate that they
occupy can leave you feeling drained, irritable, on edge and hopeless. This “crisis fatigue” can impact our
relationships, as well as our motivation to work toward the changes we’d like to see in the world. It’s not
all bad news, though. There are some things we can do to mitigate and minimise the effects of crisis fatigue.

Continued next page….

National Office: PO Box 88, Rosanna, Victoria 3084 Australia | www.forbravery.org.au