Beyond the Clouds (eBook)

Last journal entry of the day (22.01 GMT-5): my name is Claudio, I am a psychologist specializing in disaster mental health interventions. During the twenty-plus hours of air travel today I learned a lot and, more than ever, I feel being the author of my own story. In eleven hours, I will start training my colleagues in dealing with the psychological impact of the earthquake that hit the island and together we will build a crisis intervention.

Everything is ready and I do not feel like sleeping now. On the journey to this massive disaster, I realized something very important: I have been working in crises all over the world, but have done insufficient work on my own internal travel. Even though it is late and tomorrow will be a long and intense day, I want to write down every detail of this experience “beyond the clouds” and learn from it. I cannot procrastinate, not after today. Moreover it won’t be difficult, it’s all still very vivid and present in my mind. In fact, it will help me sleep better. I’ll just have to go through my thoughts from the moment I sat in the airplane and add what I haven’t already jotted down in my journal.

Maybe one day I will also share this writing. I think it might be interesting for colleagues working in similar contexts and those “explorers” and “would-be explorers” who do not give up their search, even in “poor visibility conditions.”

Twenty-plus hours before…

I made it. No crazy rush with full bags, extra layers of clothing nor sweat-soaked t-shirts. Nothing to feel ashamed of so far. We will see some spots might appear on my clothes after I have eaten. My bag is overfilled as usual, and it does not allow me much space for the legs. I probably won’t need everything I’d packed, but you never know. Good to sit near the window, on the wings “of course,” but still, I can see outside. I certainly won’t miss the feeling of being in the way between a person and his toileting needs. The guy next to me looks calm. For once, I am also relaxed and hope nobody from the row behind me will play with my seat for the next twelve hours.

The airplane is moving and I cannot help to think, what has happened where I am headed and what I am going to find there. Even though I have been in similar circumstances before, sometimes it is difficult to realize that behind those dramatic images on the TV are real stories of pain, loss and despair. I must prepare myself before arriving, but I do not like watching news reports. What happened is so deep, powerful and inconceivable. Yes, I guess “inconceivable” is the right term. Cognitively, I do not think we can really grasp what actually happens when everything we longed for, loved and built disappears, when the whole life we were attached to is destroyed in a few moments. How can we make our minds fathom this?

I received a document from our local partner; it is brief but full of information. Let me see, they are not sure about the number of casualties. Anyway, does it really matter how extended the destruction is? In most cases the people I am going to meet have lost almost everything. If you are hit by a tragedy, does it truly matter for you that other thousands of people had a “similar” tragedy?

Twenty years ago, while assessing a possible partnership with me, I remember the psychiatrist in Iran asking: “How many people died where you worked the last time?” I do not recall his name, but I can still see his face when I said: “Thirty.” I guess he was weighing my experience and my tolerance to stress. We cooperated eventually, but I was offended by his reaction to my answer, because he implied that the suffering of thirty families was a less serious situation. I would have liked to tell him how the life of an entire village was destroyed, a whole region upset and an entire nation touched by that event. By judging from his coldness to the subject, I thought he, along the way, had lost something by witnessing too much suffering, or maybe power and responsibilities might have unbalanced him.

So much time has passed since our exchange and I now understand that basically he was missing a key aspect in that conversation: the process. If a professional is not part of a structure and a process, he cannot be supportive to one, twenty-eight or one thousand persons. If I were he, today I would have probably asked: “Which kind of process are you suggesting? What is your experience in this regard?” It is curious how adding a line to this story cheered me up a little.

The guy next to me on the airplane seems absorbed in his thoughts. Slowly we taxi on the runway and are now in the queue for taking off. It is a beautiful, sunny day. This time I will not skip a season or two and the grass will still be green when I return home.

I usually feel nostalgic at this point, but not this time. Maybe I am getting more organized. I did not have to rush for last minute errands. I do not even feel tired. There is such diversity in the world: some people get very tense when the airplane takes off; for me, it is usually the moment I begin to feel more relaxed. The guy close to me also seems very composed. No envy for him sitting in the middle. The fact I am not feeling tired could also be another sign that I paced myself better for this departure. Let me write this point down. Here is my journal, my best friend in these situations. Maybe, after almost twenty years, I have learned something.1 This is a good starting point for my writing.

Since Isabella and I have started working together, this is the first time I have left alone. Perhaps this is why I am having such a rush of past memories. She will reach me in a few days but, if she were here, she would probably say, “Is this another Memory Day of yours?” I like her irony, she always makes me smile with this joke. Am I becoming like the fictional character, Mr. Higgins2? I do not like this idea, because although he is charming in his own way, every time he starts telling a story, people vanish! I always wanted to be more like Magnum. Anyway, I guess it makes sense having all these memories floating around today. This recalling is most probably a way to get mentally ready for the situation I will soon face.

Some call it a “mission.” Well, it is not. It is a profession and as such it requires specific preparation and relevant experience (Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 2007, p.73) and a structure where the expertise can be provided. Most importantly, a “mission” for me is something you dedicate completely with no restraint, risking everything. On the contrary, in any profession, you have to balance your working commitment with other components of life.

I can hear my friend Paolo’s words when he talks about Greek architecture: “Beauty is in the perfection of the proportions of the different elements. Humans are wired to appreciate and enjoy good proportions.” I believe he is right and proportions are relevant also for any professional. For instance, how much time and energy to dedicate to different aspects such as personal needs, family, actual working practice, study, research, self-care, and professional growth? There is so much to balance for a worker in crisis scenarios. I like the idea Isabella and I formulated for a conference in Australia (Mochi, 2017). It is about the characters from The Wizard of Oz3 following the Yellow Brick Road. Let me figure out how it was and prepare a note card4:

It is extremely important to have all members along the “road,” and their presence needs to be proportionate to the situation. Thinking in these terms, the psychiatrist I’d recalled before was accompanied by the Lion and the Scarecrow: confident expertise. They dominated the scene, to me appearing to leave the other characters mostly in the shade. A constructive activity to suggest at some point of my training could be answering the following questions: “How would I assess myself in those realms in my work? What is dominant at the moment and what is the area where I feel I would like to improve?” The Yellow Brick Road analogy as intended here fits well in a crisis context, but I also see how it could make sense in private practice. I guess any individual in the helping professions should find the appropriate companions for his path and work on the right proportions.

So here I am, in the airplane, getting prepared for work with my silent Memory Day. Looking outside the window, I realize I overcame the internal debate on the relevance and value of my work. Psychological intervention post-disaster is such a specific field that deals with profound wounds, irremediable losses, offering such intangible support. The value of this kind of intervention is not always understood, and often in the field I have to explain what our work is about. I remember a heart surgeon telling me: “We save children’s lives. What do you do instead?” She could definitely...