Dear Santa Barbara Families,
I wanted to reach out to you all this morning because I know how I felt waking up today and thought some of you might be feeling something similar. I woke up exhausted from days of not sleeping well and then the sadness came and then I felt agitated and now I don’t know what I feel. That all happened in the span of about 10 minutes. I thought it might be helpful to remind you all that we are all going to process this horrific tragedy in our own unique ways.
When we go through traumas like this our bodies go into to a response: fight, flight, freeze or faint. These are survival mechanisms that have kept us alive for centuries. When we are in this mode, our bodies move the blood from our brains and some of our organs to our limbs and muscles so that we might be able to respond to danger. Fight mode gives us a sense of action, purpose, and force. It focuses us and seems to give us power and control in a powerless situation. It is important to know that when in this fight or flight mode our cognitive functioning has changed and we literally cannot hold all of the pieces of the situation. This is an adaptive process and is here for a reason, it keeps us alive. We need to actively focus on how we must downshift from it when we don’t need it. To get our minds and bodies recalibrated. One way we can do this is with flushing our systems. You can flush three ways: cry it out, sweat it out or pee it out. That’s why you are told to exercise, drink water, allow yourself to grieve.
We have these two things: love and fear. Both have gotten us through existence. Fear keeps us alive. Love gives us hope, courage, purpose and meaning. Both of these things have a space here and in the coming weeks. As we gather together as a community to grieve and heal and celebrate the lives of our deceased community members be gentile with yourselves and with those you love.