What about my health?

Emotional Support

Checking in with your GP regularly is still important, especially at this time when you might think that you should be over it.
Different and unexpected emotional reactions to your situation now, may be brought on by continued changes in your circumstances, new challenges, the difficulty and time it is taking to bring things to a close. You may experience only one or two of these reactions and in no particular order, or you may be feeling completely overwhelmed.

• continually re-living the event
• difficulties sleeping and concentrating, feeling irritable and anxious
• deliberately avoiding people, locations or thoughts about the fire because it brings painful memories
• feeling emotionally numb and losing interest in life
• feeling isolated, alone and emotionally flat
• Coping with triggers which lead to reliving the event
• Handling an anniversary of the event
• Coping with 2nd stage grief, depression, post traumatic stress.
• Poor memory (stress related) can’t remember what it was like before the event
• In new goal-setting mode, you lose touch with former goals and plans
• Neglect of self, relationships, family and recreation
• Social and community life is side tracked and community support may be diminishing.
• Disorientated: previous lifestyle gone, attachments lost.

One morning it hit home. Looking at a strange kitchen table and a mixture of odd breakfast things I stood transfixed. I realised that this was who we were. This was who I was. Right up until then, it had been an adventure, almost fun, and a bizarre alternative holiday. We all felt that way. We all expected to go back to who we were and take up our lives from where we left off. Then it hit… we were never going back there, and would certainly never be those people again. I believed that we would never be the free-spirited people we had been. Our innocence, our identity, had somehow been taken away from us.

Positive emotions

Some of you may not experience much disruption in your feelings and emotions at all.

• Survival assured, taking a future view and planning
• Thinking clearer, big picture, longer term, more complex
• Routines more settled
• Stress diminishing
• Numbness wearing off, more emotionally involved.
• Moving towards your comfort zone again

Routines

Routines are how families organise themselves to get things done, spend time together and have fun. To establish new routines in your new circumstances and/or to reinstate past routines helps to lesson anxiety and aid your recovery.

Routines help restore order when your situation is chaotic. It helps bring levels of stress down as people and household organisation returns to recognisable and safe patterns. Routines provide a sense of security, comfort and safety.
In these initial stages of recovery even the basic, everyday routines we take for granted can make a big difference:

• Regular meals, regular times for showers and bath time

• If you haven't already done so resume your medications; maybe add supplements which will help general good health

• Resume any regular activities prior to the fire: such as training, walking, family movie nights, bed time reading with children

Routines help family members understand what’s important, reinforces their shared beliefs and values, and build a sense of belonging and togetherness Everyone knows who does what, when, in what order and how often. Routines can help resolve disputes and make decisions.

Even though you may not feel like routine activities, or feel too overwhelmed to perform these everyday tasks, establishing one routine will make a difference.

If you are having difficulty, enlist the help of a calm and relaxed relative or friend for encouragement and to help you establish simple routines for the children. You will feel much better for it.

You are facing daily challenge and stress. Do not hesitate to get help at any time.

Fatigue

You may feel drained and low in energy as your body continues to work through the effects of trauma.

Extra rest and water intake will help to ease the fatigue as well as a wholesome diet of nutritious foods.

Relationships

Dealing with people's individual responses to trauma and stress can be challenging to deal with, especially if they don't match or reflect yours. Your relationships may have suffered. Relationships are personal but some guidelines are common and can provide a foundation for discussion. Take a look at this video from Dr Rob Gordon on trauma and relationships .