Emotional Recovery After Natural Disasters: How to Get Back to Normal Life (An Idyll Arbor Personal Health Book) (Paperback)

by Ilana Singer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Introduction During the first two to four weeks after any disaster, workers rush to fix collapsed bridges and freeways, utility crews replace broken poles, gas lines and power lines while water crews repair water supplies and sewers. The Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Salvation Army set up shelters and food lines, all working to repair the infrastructure and establish order from chaos. But engineers can't fix people, nor can retrofitted buildings heal the trauma that survivors of natural disasters experience.

Disaster survivors need more than simple advice from a grief counselor. They need a mental mechanism to cope with their emotional trauma. If you are a disaster victim, this book provides you with that mental mechanism. If you have a relative or friend who has been in a natural disaster, this book will help you understand what the person is going through and how you can help with the healing process.

Coping and moving beyond the emotional trauma works best when you use the right "tactics," tactics that are found in this book. The six tactics tell you what to do to build the mechanism you need. They offer a solution, not a diagnosis. They belong to a unified psychotherapy, not an eclectic collection of mental health exercises that merely try to make you think differently.

These tactics differ from traditional counseling in three profound ways. First, they help put you in charge of you. You become the expert on your needs and your solutions. Second, unlike traditional counseling theories, these do not rely on a "talking cure." They disprove the notion that to recover and avoid posttraumatic stress disorder, you must relive your horror by repeatedly talking about what you saw, heard and felt. (In fact, this is one of the worst things that you can do.) Third, they refute the counseling and medical notion that you will go through predictable stages of grief recovery before getting over your ordeal.

A human behavior model, not a medical disease model, underpins these six tactics. The human behavior model holds that emotional reactions result from ordinary human characteristics, not pathogens, and that our emotional reaction system is unique and differs from that of any other person. There is no formula to follow. Rather, you can learn to neutralize your emotional upset even during catastrophic circumstances, a position confirmed by three decades of field research at the Center for Counter-Conditioning Therapy®.

From the Publisher
Practical advice for survivors of large-scale disasters that work when the techniques used by the "trauma industry" fail.

If we had known when this book was published in early 2001 what was going to happen on September 11, we would still have written the same book. We would, however, have left the word "natural" out of the title.

This book talks about what to do when any large-scale disaster strikes. It speaks to survivors of disasters and those who are helping them recover.

The first step, and the one that is most often forgotten, is to regain emotional stability. It does not help to relive the disaster over and over. It is vital to put it aside, at least for a while, and reestablish normal routines and contacts. This book is filled with practical, tested suggestions, including examples of what to do and what not to do as part of recovering from disaster and returning to normal life.

It’s normal, after you have been in a disaster, to be lost and hurting. You just suffered a tremendous blow, probably larger than you can comprehend. Your whole world has changed. Many of the people, places and things in your life has changed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t put everything back the way it was.

However, you can create a good, new life. You can rebuild the relationships with your family and friends. First, though, you need to regain the most important aspect of your life, your emotional stability.

This book is filled with practical information and tactics for victims of natural disasters and the people who work with them. There are tested, successful suggestions including examples of what to do and what not to do as part of recovering from natural disasters and returning to normal life.

This book was used by the Salvation Army after the Southern California fires of 2003.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: Idyll Arbor (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882883438
• ISBN-13: 978-1882883431
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #908,670 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Immediate Help with Natural Disaster and Other Life Traumas, June 5, 2001

By A Customer

Although the title of the book points to the treatment of trauma from natural disasters like fire, flood or earthquake, its use is easily extended to other large traumas in life: widowhood, layoff, shocking medical news like breast cancer. When I got my own shocking news, I so appreciated specific remedies which I could use right then and there - and which did much to alleviate my emotional pain and fear. For example, the "thought-voices" - those involuntary intrusions which surface day or night to send you dark, dreary and counterproductive messages - can and should be quieted to give you the space to get back on track, to get back into your life, quickly. There are techniques in this book to silence these unwanted messengers. A goal is to not linger in the trauma, not to be debilitated by it. With compassionate regard, Singer's style is clear, touching and well-written; she gets right to the point; her practices and techniques are grounded in decades of treating trauma victims; there is no "padding". I am generally super leery of therapy and self-help but give this book 5 stars and gratitude for its lucidity, practicality and the specific help that it gave me personally.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With information, advice and counseling, May 22, 2001

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Natural disasters come in a wide variety of forms and degrees of severity. But there is one universal factor -- their devastating impact on the lives and emotions of the men, women and children who endure and survive them. In Emotional Recovery After Natural Disasters, Ilana Singer has written a unique self-help book of information, advice and counseling on how best to get back to a normal life after experiencing a flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or any other kind of natural disaster. Singer addresses "ordeal fatigue", depression as a response to trauma, the phenomena of "ambient anxiety", and more. Of special interest are the chapters "Children Speak"; Teens Speak"; "Senors and Trauma Recovery". Emotional Recovery After Natural Disasters is enhanced further with a chapter dedicated to "Frequently Asked Questions"; a glossary, a bibliography for further study, and an index. If you or a loved one is experiencing a delayed or impaired psychology/emotional recovery from a natural disaster experience, then I urge you to give a careful reading to Ilana Singer's Emotional Recovery After Natural Disasters.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is useful even beyond arena of natural disasters, June 4, 2001

By A Customer

Although the title of the book points to the treatment of trauma from natural disasters like fire, flood or earthquake, its use is easily extended to other large traumas in life: widowhood, layoff, shocking medical news like breast cancer. When I got my own shocking news, I so appreciated specific remedies which I could use right then and there - and which did much to alleviate my emotional pain and fear. For example, the "thought-voices" - those involuntary intrusions which surface day or night to give you dark, dreary and counterproductive messages - can and should be quieted to give you the space to get back on track, to get back into your life, quickly. There are techniques to silence these unwanted messengers. A goal is to not linger in the trauma, not to be debilitated by it. With compassionate regard, Singer's style is clear, touching and well-written; she gets right to the point; her practices and techniques are grounded in decades of treating trauma victims; there is no "padding". I am generally super leery of therapy and self-help but give this book 5 stars and gratitude for its lucidity, practicality and the specific help that it gave me personally.