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Large swathes of Queensland and Victoria and many parts of New South Wales have been devastated by the worst deluge in living memory (Australian Government, Disaster Assist website 2011a). It would have been hard to miss the news coverage, especially of the Queensland floods.

More recently, Cyclone Yasi, a category 5 storm with winds in excess of 300 kmh has torn across Far North Queensland (ABC News website, 2011b) and countless people have lost homes and livelihoods. Some have lost love ones. Some have lost everything.

Hard on the heels of the soaking of the eastern states, way beyond capacity, massive bushfires have raged on the edge of Perth, destroying more than seventy homes, and damaging dozens more, Other wildfires have burned out of control in more rural parts of Western Australia; and additional floods have swept across northern and western Victoria. Not to mention Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires of only two years ago.

Mother Nature is certainly giving our country a pounding lately, and some say this is the start of more to come (ABC News website 2011c). All of these events are afflicting people with grief, bereavement and loss. As it is Queensland residents who have been most severely affected, what follows is a discussion and an interview of a counsellor from Queensland in one of the areas affected by floods. We must not, however, forget the many people in Victoria and NSW who have also been affected.

The areas most severely affected by the floods were the Lockyer Valley and the Toowoomba region (Queensland Counsellors Association website 2011). Massive flooding was also experienced by residents of Ipswich and Brisbane and some parts of Northern NSW. Up to three quarters of Queensland has been inundated by these floods (Queensland Counsellors Association website 2011). At this stage, though, the focus for this article is on Queensland, as there have been thirty-five flood-related deaths since 30 November 2010 and twenty-two more confirmed deaths in Southeastern Queensland with the more recent floods (ABC News website 2011a). This news of those who have perished is current as of this writing, but there are still people missing and it seems at this stage likely they may never be found.

Acute stress in times of traumaMost of us have seen the footage of people, cars, houses, equipment, and infrastructure being swept away by the raging floodwaters. It is so real and raw for the people of Queensland, especially the Lockyer Valley region, as it was there where the greatest number of people perished in the floods. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP 2011) discusses the need, in the event of such tragedy, to be aware of acute traumatic stress that arises from being exposed to such trauma as the threat of death, loss of loved ones, loss of possessions, or loss of income or livelihood. Those people caught up in the floods may have lost all these at once. The RACGP (2011) argues that if somebody already has a pre-existing mental illness, traumatic circumstances like these floods can exacerbate such symptoms.

Grief and loss related to the floods or natural disastersIn times of trauma and crisis, the shock, reality, grief and gravity of loss of the situation for many has barely set in, and the effects

can be long-tem and lasting. Additionally, those in crisis or traumatic circumstances react to traumatic events differently (Relationships Australia 2011). Bronwyn Morris, a Queensland counsellor, describes below the idea that we have not yet seen the full ramifications of how the Queensland floods have affected and will affect people’s lives, nor have flood victims really started to grieve their lost loved ones, homes, possessions and livelihoods. Most of these events are unparalleled in the lives of many who have experienced them, and will continue to shape their lives forever. We only have to look to the Black Saturday bushfires two years ago in Victoria, where 173 lives were lost and whole communities destroyed (ABC News website, 2011d) to see how people can be affected. We therefore must not forget any client who has been through such heartache and tragedy.

The interviewRenee McDonald, a psychotherapist in practice in the Illawara region of New South Wales spoke with Bronwyn Morris, who lives in Ipswich, Queensland and runs a psychiatric facility there, about the effects of the recent Queensland floods on her community.

RM: How long will it take for the community to work through the initial shock of this tragedy?BM: The initial shock is really still there and some people are just going back to their houses now. The shock as a cumulative effect may take up to three to six months to be fully realised. For certain members of the community, it may take twelve months or more before the events can be processed such that the deeper grieving can emerge. When the actual event first occurred, many people did not know whether their homes were flooded or not; they had been asked by the relevant authorities. to evacuate as a safety precaution For many people, there is compounding shock, and this has multiple levels—not only loss of home [or not knowing], but not knowing whether family or friends are safe. Maybe they discover that they have lost someone close , maybe lost a job [physical losses] or business.

The emotional experience of helplessness, fear and isolation arises. They could be walking back to a home that is gutted, or gone. There may be changes to what they would expect, like the absence of essential services. In our house, we couldn’t drink the water [due to concerns about whether it was contaminated]; we brought in bottled water. The electricity was turned off for many. People in our contemporary society are simply not cognisant of experiences of lack such as no good drinking water, nor access to groceries such as milk and bread nor having had a home wiped away. The enormity of the damage has only just started to be worked through.

RM: How can the counselling community can support each other in such times of tragedy and grief?BM: We work as a team. It has to be a shared thing. For example, one counsellor knew of an Evacuation Centre—one outside the parameters of town—and she was called in to deal with a significant crisis in the area. A caravan park had been declared a health risk [condemned due to the mud and destruction], and the tenants were told that it was being bulldozed. The only way

Counselling Communities: The Shared Impact of Natural Disaster Renee McDonald in discussion with Bronwyn Morris

this counsellor could deal with that was by contacting colleagues for assistance. In this instance, having the capacity to call on us other counsellors not only reduced the stress associated with telling the residents, but it also highlights the importance of networking. Importantly, counsellors need to have and use their networks of colleagues as an established practice [to be effective in these crises].

At the time, I hadn’t understood how involved I had become. We were all involved. A colleague of mine picked me up on a feeling I expressed that we, as local counsellors, were being sidelined from giving assistance when, within the week, other social service volunteers, such as social workers etc, had been flown in from interstate to help. My colleague reminded me of how tired we were and of how the impact of the events was wearing us down, [remembering that we still have our own practices, families and personal losses]. This has reminded me, on reflection, of the importance of feedback and collegial support. It is the important process of supervision—even in a crisis situation—so all important counselling practices should apply, though they will be experienced in a concertinaed form, if you like. If we had kept going, we would have burnt out very quickly, and I am now very thankful for all the interstate support. When refreshed, we will have many years ahead to continue assisting our community’s recovery.

RM: Ipswich is a very small, regional town, just outside of Brisbane. How do tragedies like this affect small town residents?BM: On this occasion, I think being small was a very bonding situation so that even as counsellors, we quickly knew each other, or we’d had contact through other people. That kind of interdisciplinary/collegial respect and relationships made it easy to work with each other. We didn’t have any special clothes on, so Lifeline provided us with jackets as identification. These were a few among the team-focused practices that occurred. We could then respond immediately, more quickly walk into that immediate team structure and work as a team. Alternatively, we would have needed to introduce each other, establish ourselves, our roles and responsibilities—if we didn’t know each other. It cuts through red tape to live in a small community. It highlights the need for supportive collegial structures. That was very helpful, as were mobile phones; but at times we couldn’t communicate with these either.

RM: On a personal note, it appears the flood came close and you helped others. Can you tell me a little more about this?BM: On a personal note, it was very scary. It was the Monday night. We knew the floods were imminent. We saw the inland tsunami through Toowoomba on the Tuesday morning news. In a million years we would not have expected that to happen. It was a massive shock, and I was really quite scared, as were my children [older children]. We were warned that “a wall of water” was coming towards Ipswich. You have all sorts of thoughts. Your training helps you go into emergency response mode. As for my own house and family, they are all okay. My husband was helping. There was definitely a crossover between home and family and professional roles. Directing a psychiatric facility created a greater responsibility at the time. When

disaster is imminent, it’s best to have a means of taking action, systematic action. This takes away the feeling of helplessness. We were really able to understand that we may not have clean water, sewerage, and milk. Fortunately, I have staff who were able to get things for us [before supplies ran out]. I sent our staff out to get things, though the roads were getting drenched and there was the possibility of being cut off. We then knew we had water and long-life milk. Not long afterwards, the power then went out. We were one of the very fortunate who did not lose power. Many people lost power ,food and water. All your family and friends have been affected. I know people in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley. There were some people you don’t get to contact for what seems like a long time—and some people I haven’t heard from yet. Toowoomba is about a two-hour drive from Ipswich, so not far.

RM: What are your thoughts about counselling in your community after such untold grief?BM: First of all, having an understanding that this is not something that is going to be finished in the short term is essential. We are still going to be having people requiring help for a long time yet. State-wide, it has been estimated that there will be 20% additional mental health issues because of the floods, especially with farmers (Patrick McGorry on ABC Rural 2011). The expectation that this is going to be a long-term issue needs to be there. I have put my name forward where I can volunteer. They are suggesting some money and funding for flood crisis interventions. Counsellors are accessing avenues to assist through their respective associations ACA (the Australian Counselling Association) is opening up a crisis line. As counsellors, we need to be flexible. Volunteers are also needed in support roles, as well as counselling roles. Being prepared to exercise those micro-skills with people—often that is enough to meet immediate needs. My thought is that there is a great need to have support groups, rather than too much one-on-one counselling.

I have heard that Lifeline disaster responses for the bushfires [in Victoria] found that the shared experience in a group setting is a very useful mechanism for recovery. This might be a good reference point in our own community. Remember that memories of the tragedies, dates, times and places stay with people and are re-experienced in multiple ways on anniversaries etc, so ongoing supportive groups can assist. I think Vietnam vets, RSL and other support groups will attest to the positive influence of shared experiences and show that working in a group context can assist recovery. I also think that a group context (and I saw numerous examples during the immediate crisis), inspires each of us to find our resilience; it helps to be helping. This has a flow-on affect. PTSD is mediated by the capacity for the victim to be assisting others, by feeling empowered in the context of helplessness.

RM: How does one retain a professional hat in your own community, especially given that it is a small town?BM: There’s not a really succinct answer to that one. It is tremendously hard. You are trained, so that in some respects it is easier to move into a mode of professionalism; it gives you protection. You develop an inbuilt mechanism; it’s almost like an

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automatic response as counsellor. Things break through, though. It is very hard not to become emotionally involved; realistically, it is impossible to stay completely composed. It is very hard to get your head around it. There often aren’t words. You go back to very basic micro-skills, because it’s just too right in your face. The best and safest things are to rely on your micro-skills—on listening and empathic skills. You, too, are absorbing the events at the same time. You truly are walking beside somebody else in a profound way.

There is a danger of going into over helping mode. Your defences are down somewhat .It is personal. I found that there’s no ‘off button’ in this situation. Until somebody else pushed my ‘off button’ in terms of wanting to help, I did not recognise it. This again highlights the need for other professionals to be working alongside you. It’s important to recognise that you have a family and people at work who also need you. It’s a danger to get so involved that you neglect your own life.

It was important to say “Hey, let’s take a step back”—for yourself and for others. I realised how drained I was. I was beginning to neglect my regular life duties. We talk about it in counselling supervision, but we especially can’t neglect it in a traumatic situation. You need supervision on the ground in the midst of the disaster—as part of a team.

In retrospect, I recognise that we need the ability and the capacity to develop our own disaster management plan. I now know one can never say ‘it won’t happen to us’! The government’s disaster management plan was brilliant. The Red Cross and Lifeline and the government were great at the evacuation centre. Thankfully, there was no playing politics. The Ipswich mayor

was so involved and was even singing to people. That sort of personal touch helps people feel that they are not isolated or abandoned. They came together as a community. They felt that they weren’t alone. They could share the experience, all the information was there. They preferred that over being isolated in a private dwelling.

In our residential facility, we took in a number of elderly residents from the local evacuation centre on the first night, as it was chaotic at the centre. The following day I went back to undertake counselling and invited others to more private accommodation. By the next day, no one seemed to want to leave the evac centre. I also noticed that over the next few days the elderly guests were agitated and unsettled at the residential setting, until someone visited them from the evac context. I note that isolation or a sense of abandonment was experienced as a very negative impact. Some communities were cut off for a few days, no communication, power or food, These people experienced an increased level of distress, I believe.

RM: Can you a little more about those elderly residents?BM: That was a tricky one. They had an initial need for some comfort that night; the first night. It seemed like the best thing to do at the time. They had walkers, they had toileting needs; and there were at that stage no beds or showers close by—but as the time went on, in the more comfortable residential setting they became agitated or restless, ass they weren’t with the rest of the community in the evacuation centre. What I didn’t initially realise was that they were experiencing some sense of isolation. That’s what their agitation was about—feeling isolated. You

need to reconnect people really quickly, even by going up to the evacuation centre with them during the daytime. For them it may have seemed that all choices had been taken away from them. Being told you had to leave your home is not comfortable for anyone, least of all for the elderly and infirm. People’s attitudes were good, but it was incredibly hard. The elderly people already experienced considerable loss of dignity. To re-connect them more quickly might have given them a greater opportunity to gain a sense of dignity by being involved with the rest of the evacuee community. I think I will remember that—next time—though I hope there isn’t one.

RM: How can counsellors stop themselves from becoming overly involved?BM: I still need to reflect on that. I still have to explore it. It was totally unexpected. There was no sense of preparedness. So if someone was a counsellor and they didn’t expect to be in that situation, they wouldn’t have even thought about how to respond. We have so much professional development and supervision. You can never ever say you’re not going to be in this kind of situation. It would be part of our responsibility as counsellors to access professional development and reading around disaster response. Trauma specialists can speak to how we deal with it. We need a plan. It creates an awareness. As a counsellor, I will explore this and reflect on it, and I will have my own understanding of disaster and trauma response management.

We really need to operate as a team and have that network so that each of us at least has another colleague that has our backs, as we will theirs. Working at being active in our local

communities, building relationships, both professionally and personally, is incredibly important and will continue to be so for the community in recovery.

RM: How has this affected the people of your community?BM: It is still evolving. I think it will shape us. The sense of community will be stronger. The politicians have really helped with that. It is an equaliser. No one is untouched by it. It creates a common, shared experience. It brings out a real feeling of community—of a shared bond. It brings out the best in people. If that wasn’t there before, it certainly is now. I can’t know the ongoing repercussions. It is still possible for some further fragmentation to happen. Still some people will lose their houses, or simply move away. What does this mean for the ongoing commerce and business in the area? I don’t think I can really comment on that. Road access and where we build might change. There are discussions: Do we make another access point, such as bridges or new roads, that will change neighbourhoods [geographically speaking] again? We are going to see changes down the track. I don’t know what this will mean. It’s hard to define.

In the short term, it has drawn the community closer. Everybody is watching everybody’s back. Not one person wasn’t affected. Even for our psychiatric residents. Being part of something bigger than themselves empowered them. It helped enhance their sense of belonging. Their feelings of stigma [related to their psychological diagnosis], meant this crisis helped the psychiatric residents [who live in the facility] to feel they are an integral part of things. It is probably a rare experience for them.

Shared catastrophe has that affect on people. This experience inadvertently created the possibility that something therapeutic might result from the event!

RM: What has the support been like, from the people from outside your area?BM: A number of us—myself and other counsellors—were helping at an evacuation centre just beyond Ipswich. After a week or so, a group of people who came in through the Red Cross then put their hands on the situation and took it over. My thinking about it was that as the social services became more organised, they were able to supply fully trained disaster response teams. That response was incredible. This invaluable support assisted local support services such as volunteer counsellors to avoid very quickly burning out, becoming fatigued and losing the capacity to attend to their own grief and losses. You do shift work, somebody has to come and replace you. You can’t be on duty twenty-four hours, seven days a week. The support, the relief, also helped me to recover a little. The support from outside Queensland has been amazing. You simply cannot carry a disaster response by yourself. You need a team.

RM: Is there anything other counsellors, like those from interstate, could be doing?BM: I would probably do what I have done, say, in the Victorian bushfires, and place my name on volunteer registers to counsel. If you are able and willing, from my point of view, counsellors will be needed—even more so. The government will assess the difficulties and assess the backup support required to each area [as there are so many]. There will be a longer-term need here. Our resources will get pushed. Counsellors outside this area could provide counselling by email, blogs and Skype support. It is good to know that other people are thinking about you. We could do that between our respective counselling associations. Supporting the counselling community would be a helpful thing. ACA is setting up a support help line. Not sure of any of those details. Then clients can be directed to it.

RM: How is this grief affecting your clients and/or client groups?BM In one of the places, for the group of people losing their homes, the grief is pretty multiple. It’s the initial recognition and shock that they’re losing everything they own. Their responses are initially linked to comprehending that they have absolutely nothing except their clothes—maybe. It just dislocates them. Their whole sense of who they’ve been, historically, dislocates. Houses, personal effects and other possessions are linked to family, memories, special events—significant events in their lives, and their achievements. These things are symbolic of who the person has been. A client had lost his son a few years back [prior to the floods], and in the floods he had lost all of his son’s things. The trauma becomes about a whole lot of different moments and events. It is not just one experience of shock and grief but must rather be understood as recurring shock and grief, along with the reigniting of past grief experiences.

As a process, what was notable to me was the ebb and flow between the recognition of the great losses in one moment and then in the next moment having a joke—and ‘at least I’ve got my life’—was profound. That happened as a direct result of the shared context. That was the great balancer of the experience [seeing someone else affected, or worse off]. It could otherwise be a very black hole for some. People can be quite desperate in their grief. We expected people to be very angry, especially those who’d had their homes bulldozed. If they were angry, it wasn’t the anger you would expect. It is very early days, though. I think it was because of the shared context, the mitigating factor that brought some kind of anchor to all that was going on chaotically around—a sense of ‘but I’m okay’—then they could settle again. Some moved to thinking ‘I just can’t start again; I just don’t want to do this again’, but then to ‘isn’t this great that people are there for us’. That’s what was happening as the process was unfolding.

It’s a very interesting, this way of being able to process enormous things in a group. It is the shared context every time that helped, in terms of resilience. That sense of resilience is a very important thing. It entails focusing on every positive asset of how they have coped and how they are going to cope. That is

essential to how a counsellor engages people. There was a depth of grief and possible despair, though the high level of support buoyed people from giving in to that terrible grief.

RM: Have you ever seen events like this before?BM: I have never experienced this. Never. It is a unique situation.

RM: What is the human spirit that you have seen in the aftermath of such a tragedy?

It is just amazing—a really profound experience—to be amongst it. You can talk to someone who’s in the worst possible situation but who is concerned about or even helping someone else. The generosity of people is absolutely overwhelming. What it says to me is there’s a remarkable imprint in the human psyche. I’m feeling it’s the human spirit or ‘God in us’ because it has an unfathomable capacity. It is something that’s already there. It has to be a spiritual dimension to the person. In the right relational setting, I believe it’s not really difficult to elicit from a person their inner resilience. Once it’s fired up it’s like lighting the fire. I think it catches and it’s the whole community. You wouldn’t doubt the spirit of humanity in these crises.

In some ways, that has been even more overwhelming, [heartening], and it’s like a healing balm. We can never underestimate the power of facilitating someone to a sense of his or her own resilience, and it can only happen in a shared context, in fact often one of crisis.

What Renee found from this interview and the flood experiences as seen through Bronwyn’s eyes is that above all else, even when tragedy strikes, the human condition means that those affected by such trauma can rise above it to become part of a collective resolution and build on their own resilience whilst they share the load, though those who are isolated in their trauma struggle with the enormity of it (ABC Rural 2011).

References

ABC News Online website 2011(a), Death toll from south-east Qld floods rises to 22,

written: 24.1.2011 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/24/3120613.htm (accessed 30.1.11)

ABC News Online North Queensland 2011(b), Phone call from inside the eye of TC Yasi, written 3.2.2011 http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/02/03/3129135. htm?site=northqld (accessed 7.2.11)

ABC News Online 2011 (c), More natural disasters on Australia’s radar, written 23.1.2011 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/23/3119109.htm?section=justin (accessed 7.2.11)

ABC News Online 2011 (d), Survivors to mark Black Saturday anniversary, written 7.2.2011 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/07/3131412. htm?section=justin (accessed 7.2.11)

ABC Rural News Online 2011, Farmers will need continual mental support, written 21.1.2011 http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201101/s3118100.htm(accessed7.2.11)

Australian Government Initiative; Disaster Assist website 2011, http://www.disasterassist. gov.au/www/disasterassist/disasterassist.nsf/Page/LatestNews_LatestNewsoffloodsinAu stralia%28November2010-January2011%29(accessed30.1.11)

Queensland Counsellors Association [QCA] 2011, QCA website, http://www.qca.asn.au/ (accessed 30.1.11)

Queensland Government, Department of Communities 2011, Community Recovery News, http://www.communityservices.qld.gov.au/community/community-recovery/ publications/documents/cr-news-brisbane.rtf (accessed 31.1.11)

Relationships Australia 2011, Trauma and Crisis Information Sheet, http://www. relationships.com.au/resources/pdfs/services/trauma_counselling.pdf (accessed 30.1.11)

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, 2011, Flooding and its impact on mental health;written18.1.2011,http://www.racgp.org.au/disasterresources/40915(accessed 30.1.11)

Renee McDonald is a regional Clinical Member of CAPA from the Wollongong region. She holds a Grad Dip in Counselling, a Masters of Applied Social Science and a Cert IV in Training and Assessment. Renee runs a private psychotherapy practice in the Northern Suburbs of the Illawarra and has done so over the past five years.

Bronwyn Morris is a Clinical Member of the Queensland Counsellors Association (QCA). Bronwyn is from Ipswich in Queensland and works for Questcare, a psychiatric facility. Bronwyn is also currently undertaking a Masters in Social Work. Bronwyn holds a Certificate in Community and Human Service; a Bachelor of Social Science, a Grad. Cert. in Emotional Release Counselling for children and a Grad Dip. in Theology

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