Phases of Grief in Chronic Community Trauma
We are now three months removed from the Uvalde school shooting. In the wake of the Uvalde tragedy, there is a lot of trauma for the micro and macro communities to unpack. At the micro level, the residents of Uvalde must reckon with the loss of 21 souls, loss of trust in their local police, and loss of trust in their local politicians.
At the macro level, we as Americans must also reckon with the decades-long greater pattern of neglecting to address domestic terrorism and our leadership’s apathy and inaction to stop the currently inevitable streams of what seems like easily preventable deaths.
The number of clients I work with who verbalize concerns of “what if I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time and I’m the next victim of a mass shooting” is honestly so upsetting, because they’re right, it could happen. Statistically not likely, but absolutely possible, and certainly more possible here than any other first world country.
It stings the most when I hear it from adolescents, who worry if their school will be the next target. Have you ever had to sit down with a middle schooler and their parent to create a safety plan for what to do during a school shooting since neither of them trust school security to actually protect them based on the events at Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas, and Uvalde? I have, it’s heartbreaking.
When we talk about the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – we ignore a significant question: do we want to accept this? Is “acceptance” an appropriate end goal when it comes to grieving the aftermath of chronic, preventable violence that will likely happen again if we continue to do nothing different?
As a clinician who utilizes existential therapy practices, I have switched the name “stages of grief” to “phases of grief.” Stages implies graduating from one level to the next, whereas phases do not move in a single direction, nor are they required to be isolated from one another. For example, it is quite possible to feel anger about a situation while feeling denial that there is nothing else we can do to make things better during a particular event. It is also possible to experience various phases “out of order,” such as experiencing acceptance for a period of time before slipping into depression later down the road.
I point out this distinction to say, I would posit that “acceptance” is a logical conclusion stage when looking at individual incidences of tragedy in which acceptance also comes with a sense of peace and closure. For example, it seems fair for patients with terminal cancer to seek finding peace in knowing there is nothing else to be done to change the ultimate outcome. However, it seems like an odd stage for us to strive for during chronic tragedy when we know there are absolutely more things our macro community leadership can do to reduce the likelihood of this outcome repeating, especially at this frequency.
A mass shooting is categorized by 3+ individuals dying in the same gun related incident. At the time of my writing this on September 15, 2022, there have been over 400 separate episodes of mass shootings in our country this year. We’re 258 days into the year. More children have been shot and killed this year than police officers in the line of duty. After the Pulse shooting in Orlando in 2018, Marco Rubio called it “Orlando’s turn.” Are we seriously taking turns with this? Playing literal Russian Roulette on which city will have its citizens needlessly slaughtered next?
Why the hell would we want to accept this, to make peace with living like this when we don’t have to? When literally no other first world country does? When we already have the data on what works in comparable countries for slowing down or even stopping these atrocities?
“Bargaining” and “anger” seem like much more appropriate goals to grieving this chronic trauma.
Let’s start with “bargaining.” What are we willing to give in order to protect our fellow countrymen? We already willingly sacrifice other freedoms in the name of public safety such as not bringing certain items on airplanes, not buying certain animals as pets, not building certain projects on our property, etc. It’s not a rhetorical question to ask what makes military-grade weapon possession different than exotic animal possession. I want to have my guard-crocodile because it’s there to protect my family, Sir! Keep your stupid lizard, I want my full blown crocodile because this is the land of the free!
Right now, our country willingly sacrifices the lives of thousands of Americans every year for our right to own military-grade weapons. And I do make that distinction as opposed to making a blanket statement about our rights to own guns because the efficiency rate of murdering high volumes of people with a two-barrel hunting rifle or a Colt .45 vs. an AR-15 or AK-47 is astronomically different. There are logical arguments to be made for why a person may genuinely need a hunting rifle or handgun. In the years since Columbine (1999), I have yet to hear a justifiable argument for why a civilian would ever need a gun that can shoot more than 12 rounds at a time. What, because you have the right to form a militia against a tyrannical government? You’re bringing a gun to a drone right, friend.
So when we are bargaining as a phase of grief for chronic tragedy, we are asking, “What would we be willing to give up in order for things to be different?”
Over 90% of Americans agree we need stricter background checks, so it sounds like we’re mostly on the same page that we collectively are willing to give the time and energy it takes for whatever the background check consists of along with the additional time it takes for us to be approved to actually purchase a gun. Countries like Japan, Australia, and Canada require citizens to complete a firearm safety course similar to driver’s ed, and we could adopt a similar program.
About a third of guns in circulation in the US are bought at gun shows, which increases ease at which a person could impulsively buy a high capacity rifle without wait times, background checks, or weapon registration. A large majority of Americans also agree that there needs to be greater restrictions for people to be able to buy weapons at gun shows and other unregulated events. So a majority of us are willing to give up the convenience of being able to buy guns whenever and wherever we want. These seem like reasonable starts, right? Certainly not the end game, but a fair place to start that’s backed by majority opinion.
Now, for “anger.” As a therapist, I reject the idea that anger is a negative emotion. Don’t get me wrong, unfiltered and unconstrained impulsive anger can lead to a lot of recklessness and damage. But anger is absolutely the appropriate response to what happened in Uvalde, in Buffalo, in Highland Park. Anger in our bones, in our hearts, coursing through our veins. Anger isn’t a negative emotion, even if it can be an unpleasant emotion, because it gives us direction. We tend to feel angry when we believe there has been an injustice, and what is more unjust than what happened in Uvalde: the murder of 19 children, by a man who legally purchased an automatic weapon, while police stood idly by (or actively harmed parents who tried to save their kids) for 77 minutes? That is the perfect cocktail of injustice. Anger is JUSTIFIED here.
And the important key with anger is to let it give you direction, but not decide on the specific action to take until we are calmer because we may not think through the consequences of a gut reaction. But let’s allow ourselves the power to really sit with what our anger tells us we care about, because anger is often just the tip of the ice berg. I can’t speak for everyone…but I know my anger, as more and more details came out from this story, also became intertwined with fear, betrayal, disgust, disturbance, helplessness, impatience, and downright outrage. That’s a whole lot of sub-phases of grief to process and honor.
Anger is a high-energy emotion. There tends to be a lot of drive behind it, an intense desire to resolve the issue that created its existence in the first place. And I have hope in us societally based on our capacity to feel anger at these tragedies, because anger does not tend to commingle with apathy very often. Anger, like any emotion, tells us what we care about. And the fact that we still feel so angry about this shooting despite knowing how many came before it tell us the lives of our fellow countrymen are absolutely something we still care about. We may be desensitized to hearing about and/or witnessing violence, but we are not apathetic to it.
This is why people protest, and phone bank, and volunteer, and donate money and aid, and harass their representatives. Because anger at an injustice has told them to do something to help those they care about to remedy the situation even a little bit. They are not acting with apathy, shrugging their shoulders and hoping history will somehow magically stop repeating itself on its own. They are showing so much care for their community.
So sure, we can accept that those who have died are gone and we cannot save them or bring them back. We can accept that we need to honor their deaths in a meaningful and loving way. That doesn’t feel like proper closure needed for moving forward through grief fully, though. Do we really want to accept this as our norm, as our way of life? Or do we want to bargain for something better for ourselves and generations to come? It seems unrealistic for the wound to fully heal when it gets ripped open again and again every few days by a similar injury.
As Maya Angelou famously said, “I am no longer accepting these are things I cannot change.” We do what we can to enact change, we use our anger to guide us toward finding justice. We bargain for what we are willing to sacrifice in order to prioritize safety and stability. We cannot accept this chronic trauma as our norm.
