The Earthquake Psychologist broke our hearts with his sentences describing the disaster of the century! “The magnitude of the earthquake is greater than we expected”

Yılmaz stated that the earthquake victims had to face this painful reality and move on, saying, “The size of the earthquake is greater than we expected. I was in Hatay’s Antakya district on February 6, when the earthquake occurred. I am one of those who first experienced the disaster. Experiencing this showed me that book knowledge does not progress parallel to life knowledge. The extent of the disaster was at a level that we could not see in any literature review. The traces of the earthquake still continue, but we see different traces from person to person. Some people live as if the earthquake did not happen, we call this dissociative disorder. Some people experience that earthquake moment every day and cannot break away from that moment, and we examine this under the title of post-traumatic stress disorder. At this point, personality comes into play, past life comes into play. Tendencies towards depression and anxiety come into play. That’s why the question of how we can return to normal comes to our mind. I would like to say that there is no such thing as returning to normal, because we have experienced this pain. We have to face this bitter truth and move on. “Being happy to return to normal may seem unreal in this process,” he said.

Stating that the earthquake took away the sense of continuity from people, Yılmaz said, “Our primary duty is to be with the people who experienced the earthquake and to meet their security needs and basic needs. Then, we have to go through the phase of experiencing our mourning and experiencing the reality of loss. We cannot experience this yet because we have not gained the feeling of trust. The mourning process progresses differently from person to person. Secret mourning is also included in this process. Losing a pet and losing routines are also part of grief. The earthquake took away the sense of continuity from us. The next day it took away our confidence and our routines, in fact it took away a big piece of us. It is not possible to eliminate this situation of deficiency, we need to continue with it. It is very difficult to replace the parts that are missing now, but we can replace them with new parts. “If we want to create routines and feel good, apart from the need for security, we need to take action,” he said.

Expert Psychologist emphasized that possible routines will make a person feel safe and said, “Children are among the groups most affected by the earthquake. Different symptoms occur in children, just like adults. During the preschool period, they may develop unrealistic beliefs such as “This is my responsibility, it happened because of me.” At this point, it is necessary to feel safe and confident about what we will experience in the current process. In this case, routines and possible routines will make the person feel safe. Feelings of guilt are also effective in people. Earthquake is not a very predictable situation, the earthquake found us defenseless in our beds in the middle of the night.

It is normal to feel frozen and numb at this point. They are dead, but when it comes to how we will continue, it is important how realistic we approach. We were the part that requested help, everything that happened during that period was normal. This is how my process went. The feeling of guilt is in the direction of anger, freezing and feeling guilty for being saved. “These thoughts are normal, but we need to understand that when these thoughts start to get worse, when they start to come out of reality, we need to support them professionally,” he said.

(UAV)