International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
Written By: Jennifer Metallo, Ed. S
Henri Nouwen, the great theologian wrote: “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.” International Critical Stress Foundation (ICISF) is an excellent source for the types of educational training needed that allows disaster response personnel to operate in the arena of professional acceptance during times of trauma. One of those trainings is Grief Following Trauma. Kevin Ellers along with Nancy Rikli and H. Norman Wright have written the Critical Incident Stress Management instruction manual that provides exceptional training to use when working with grief.
Some of the key points of the ICISF course covers the following:
Program Highlights
Be encouraged to know that COVID-19 has not stopped the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) from conducting many classes in a virtual format.
No matter where we are sent as BG-RRT (Billy Graham Rapid Response Team) Chaplains, we know without a doubt that grief and heartache will be present. My husband, Frank and I are a disaster response chaplain coordinator team with Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) headquartered out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (BG-RRT) chaplains are required to have and maintain crisis response training. Directly after 9/11, Franklin Graham recognized a need for an immediate response to critical, emotional, and spiritual care. In addition to his role as CEO of the BGEA, Franklin Graham also serves as the CEO of Samaritan’s Purse (SP), a Christian organization with many programs.
In the ICISF training known as Assisting Individuals in Crisis, we are taught that many of the very same
people that we meet in a disaster area or a trauma related event were already experiencing a negative life challenge such as divorce or death. This could mean that their defenses are low, and that their strength has ebbed. Often, we hear about injustice piled onto offense which has climbed onto disaster, sandwiched between loss and heartache. Sorrow; anguish; angst, and heartache are a few of the synonyms for the word grief. Shock, ordeal, distress, and disturbance are replacement word choices for ‘trauma’. Grief is individual and unique for each person who experiences it, but for all who undergo its grip, grief is a cruel and heartless master. Grief does not consider any life event sacred or off-limits to its gnarly grasp. It causes bad days to be even worse and good days to turn cloudy in a second. It is a manner less clout who barges in with no semblance of care. It will and can cause a person to act out with the petulance of a two-year-old who did not get their way. The minute one thinks it is shed of its attachment, a buried memory will cause the overwhelming remembrance and the grief associated with it to return with a vengeance. Guilt can manifest over the living, quietly asking in a berated tone how could they have forgotten about the loss, even if it was for just a moment. Remorse can rush in, merging with the initial forfeiture and bruise the heart of the survivor anew. Our mental frame of minds is created to heal…so this emotional pull and tug can cause more discomfort and trauma through the emotional heartstrings of love and loss.
Grief following trauma is a beast of another type. Please remember that grief has a variety of types and that no one specific type has a larger following or a typical path it follows. A spouse who has been on hospice care finally succumbs to the cancer that they have fought for a time is a sad but expected grief. When that same cancer survivor gets a great report from their oncologist on Friday but dies of a heart attack on Monday that is unexpected…and personifies a type of grief following trauma. The family of the one that has died probably did not have time for the fear of cancer to ebb away and yet here they are planning the funeral after all and for a different reason.
Grief following trauma consist of a one-two punch and the second punch is a sucker punch…that no one saw coming. A hurricane hits a geographical area, everyone survives, but then while cleaning up, a tree falls on a young person and kills them. The initial disaster was full of various modes of loss resulting in community grief, and the continued tragedy results in trauma. On a recent deployment to a hurricane prone area that had experienced a Category Four (150 mph wind speed) storm, one disaster response leader stated that Hurricane Delta coming in so quickly on the heels of Hurricane Laura added insult to injury. Hurricane Laura caused grief; Hurricane Delta caused people to remember the grief, build fear for another storm and has now induced trauma for some.
When BG-RRT chaplains are deployed and working with someone who has experienced the results of trauma, we often just sit and listen. People have described grief after trauma as a moment in their life like no other, an intensity that has literally taken their breath away for a moment or two. Movement seemed as if it was in slow motion, each second seemingly a lifetime with instant and permanent placement of triggers based on an event, a smell or a color tied to the trauma. Grief following trauma can surprise a person with its swiftness and stealth. It can lay silent and dormant, but suddenly rear its ugly head when least expected by a trigger of some memory or event. Sometimes it can be a constant cacophony of thoughts and memories from the heart that cause real physical flashes of pain that transpose into state of mental fugue that slows down the recovery of the person experiencing it. Trauma is an event or life experience that roars in with a sudden vengeance wreaking havoc and shock in its wake that extends to all those it affects. When life events hands any of us a combination of the two, the resulting grief lays bare the emotions of the strongest person, it can numb the best intentions, derail the best laid plans of mankind and cause even the best trained response agents to fall back and regroup. The ICISF training “Grief Following Trauma” will assist any disaster aid worker needing initial training and should be enough to allow for any continued educational credit needed to maintain licensure or certification.
The further value of attending the ICISF Grief Following Trauma training enables a person to exhibit Mr. Nouwen’s definition of a caring individual in a professional but compassionate manner that opens the pathway of understanding. It instructs the student in the nuances of what grief is capable of, helping to define the overall situation. This knowledge helps to identify the person who is distressed. RRT Chaplains are required to maintain training that helps us to be the type of friend Mr. Nouwen advocates.
Like Mr. Nouwen states, grief counselors do not try to fix, nor heal, just offer a ministry of presence. Well-meaning people may think that the seasons of grief have time limits or the proverbial seven stages, but the reality is grief does not care about time; nor does it care about the segment of time one spends in a certain stage of grief. It changes over the seasons, and possibly diminishes with the passing of the years, but its grip is never entirely extinguished. A descriptive way to explain disaster and grief is using the analogy of writing a book. We are all in this process of time writing chapters in our life book. Each of those chapters have different lengths and are filled with a variety of life events, both positive and negative, individually unique for each of us. Reluctantly acknowledged, grief and trauma have their place in those chapters.
If you find yourself ministering to someone who is grieving, recognize that they will have good and bad days. As these days of the springtime season blossom on the wind, please look for and participate in the wonderful world of learning through any of the available courses through ICISF. It would be a great privilege to sit in with any of you while we further our training together.
For more information about the resources mentioned in this article, visit the ICISF homepage. You can also view individual course descriptions or the requirements for specific certifications.
You can also visit https://rrt.billygraham.org/ for information on BG-RRT’s ministry. Visit https://rrt.billygraham.org/nlem/ to learn more about BG-RRT’s law enforcement ministry.
All photos taken by BGEA-RRT Chaplain Coordinator Jennifer Metallo
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