After the Fall
Struggling for emotional balance after September 11
We are not the people we used to be. "There is a difference in me," says Rachelle Cummins. "September 11th pushed me to get closer to God's word." Shaun McGovern finds himself crying more easily. Therapist Claudia Arthrell finds clients grieving anew for loved ones who died years ago.
The emotional fallout has rippled across the country. Americans like these, who were nowhere near where the twin towers fell, ache for those who were--those who now measure losses in uncelebrated birthdays and children who won't remember a parent. Even beyond that ache, however, people without tangible traumas are still finding that the attacks made a lasting and deep emotional impact. "The thing that sticks with me," says Eve Robinson of Madison, Conn., the mother of 4-month-old Briana, "is the huge feeling of loss, not for a personal friend but for the world as we knew it, for the loss of a humanness and humanity."
For many, autumn was a lost season. A new study by the think tank Rand shows that while reactions were worst in the Northeast, 9 out of 10 adults nationwide reported stress symptoms--such as bad dreams and difficulty concentrating--in the days after the attack. In the weeks that followed, emotions played out in ways that ranged from hardly noticeable to intense. Some people fell into a low-grade depression. Some lost patience. Others lost sleep. Some got angry, and some got religion. Some worried about the big picture; others found new appreciation for quiet walks. Some did all of these. Time hasn't healed, but it has helped. A Pew Research Center poll shows that 71 percent of Americans were depressed in mid-September. By mid-October the number had dropped to 29 percent.
But anxiety--fanned by anthrax scares, the Afghanistan war, and last week's plane crash in New York--still runs high. These stresses can contribute to a "pileup effect," says psychologist Charles Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute at Florida State University in Tallahassee. "It has shaken us to the bone. We haven't had the opportunity to master the sources of stress because they're still unfolding." Michael Lerner, 58, founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program and president of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, Calif., says that "every possible response to stress and fear is taking place. Some responses are constructive and life affirming. Others are destructive and restrictive."
Uneasy life. Many post-attack responses are similar to people's reactions when they learn they have a serious disease. "There's a very strong parallel between living with a life-threatening illness and the experience of living with the emergence of terrorism," says Lerner. Both can instill fear, panic, and fury over that which is unfair. Both force us to contemplate mortality and a future that no longer seems promised. Both produce a terrible waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop vulnerability.
McGovern, a film production accountant from Studio City, Calif., felt a general malaise. "I notice I have a lower energy level," says McGovern, 33. The attack, he adds, "triggered stronger responses than I normally would have. I cry more easily watching an interview with people who were directly affected or at a sad movie."
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