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American Morning

America's New War: Has Passage of Time Brought Comfort or Conflict?

Aired September 24, 2001 - 11:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: It is now of course approaching two weeks since the terrorist attacks sent American recoiling in horror and reaching out for some perspective. But has the passage of time brought comfort or conflict? Helping us to understand the angst many still feel is psychologist Joyce Brothers. She'll join us all week long to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder.

Good to see you.

A lot of people rely on your advice these day.

JOYCE BROTHERS, PSYCHOLOGIST: Paula, it's wonderful to be with you again. We go back as friends a long way.

ZAHN: Many, many years.

BROTHERS: Yes.

ZAHN: I'm going to ask you to focus in on what's the screen right now, which is an e-mail that was sent to us. And it says, "I have not heard from my wife since 8:55 on September 11. She was calling me from her office on the 105th floor of two WTC to tell me that she was fine and that only building one was hit. As to how I am healing, I am not. Not yet," Jonathan Ehrlich, Brooklyn, New York.

That certainly represents the state of limbo that thousands of families who live here already.

BROTHERS: You can not begin to heal until we have some sense that hope is gone. People hold on to hope until the very last second, and that keeps living through the terrible time when we are numb and unable to function.

I'm a widow, and years ago, my husband died of cancer. And he was given two months to live. And he said to me, I want to live as long as possible. So we fought together for two years. He was -- he lived for two years, and he, as a physician, knew that there really was no hope, and as a psychologist, I knew what I would go through. We held on the very last second. And so he is not healing, because he can't heal, until the moment that Mayor Giuliani says we are moving from rescue to search.

ZAHN: He's almost said that in the last couple of days. BROTHERS: But he hasn't.

ZAHN: He hasn't said we have given up hope completely. He said the likelihood of finding anybody alive in the rubble is quite remote. That's different, though.

BROTHERS: It's different. Even the words likelihood, we hope for miracles only that last moment. And then and only then can people begin to heal. They need that sense of there's no hope any longer. They have to be forced to face that, before they can begin to heal, and that's why funerals are so important for people, because that is the moment which they know that there is no longer any hope at all, and so that's the moment when they begin to deal with their grief.

But he may not be able to pullout of this for an interminable amount of time. Some people are hardened like diamonds and they can remarry in six months, or they can fall in love again. And other people carry this grief for years and years, and it's like a firewalk. You can't get halfway across the coals and say, all right, I'm starting to heal, you know, I'm better. You just don't start to get better until you get a little bit toward the other side. And you do that by looking form, how you can change your life to give back to someone, some of the pleasure, and delight, and the love that you found before. So wait a little bit, and it will begin to soften. Grief softens, the edges soften, it doesn't go away. It's still there forever. And his life will never be the same, again.

ZAHN: No.

BROTHERS: It can't be. There will never be an anniversary. The worst time is for Valentine's Day, because other people share your Christmas, other people share your Thanksgiving, but the Valentine's Day is going to be the toughest, so make sure that when there is special occasions, that he should be very certain to have family around him -- birthdays, holidays -- and the support of others will help him somewhat to get through.

ZAHN: Let's move along to our second e-mail.

"Our family is taking life one day at a time. I personally feel like I have a constant dark cloud hovering over me. I am going about my 'normal' activities, but am not happy. I am afraid that the government will not be able to control or get rid of the terrorists." No name provided here.

Now that is the way a lot of people in America are feeling right now.

BROTHERS: And that's why we really have to little by little reclaim our lives, take control of our lives, because as we speak, there's a siren outside, and we all feel a little bit jumpy about it, and we will; we'll have sleepless nights, we'll have horrible nightmares. We will have a feeling of anxiety and a feeling of terror now and again. Just anything can set us off. And I had the opportunity to spend some time with Dr. Hans Selig (ph) the father of the concept of stress many years ago, and he no longer is living, but he left a legacy for me, and understanding that there are two kinds of stress. There's distress and you-stress. Physically, they are the same in the body. So that those people who have an up feeling, who feel, oh, thank God, everybody I know is safe, are having just as much physical changes as people who are distressed, who know, or are close to, or have lost real losses.

ZAHN: It's fascinating. You wouldn't never think that.

BROTHERS: No. And he used to turn you-stress for the up feeling that we get. You-stress is the feeling that you get when you are on air and you are doing very well, as you are. You-stress is the feeling that a race car driver gets when he or she turns the curve, that a mountain climber gets when they get to the top of the mountain, and the people who are still digging and hoping that they will uncover some life. Those people not experiencing distress; they're experiencing you-stress, because they're doing something very, very valuable, and so we will not reclaim our lives yet. We just can't. And we have to go through this terrible time in order to get, eventually, to the other side, and there are things we can do to help ourselves. For example, we can make sure that we get rest, not naps. Naps interfere with the natural rhythms of sleep.

But we can reprogram our dreams, and we're all having nightmares, but we can write out the nightmare dream and then see that tit turns out better. I was talking to Bill Hemmer the other day talking about 3 1/2-year-old who drew the buildings and a rainbow. We can make it come out so that everybody survives, or we find miracles. And that helps shorten that time. But we can -- people are trying to exercise, too. But be careful about that. Don't exercise before you fall asleep, or right before you are ready to sleep, and don't do competitive exercise, because that brings up the distress rather than the you-stress, the kind of separate exercise or in a group, but not competing against one another.

ZAHN: You certainly touched on a lot of the conflicting feelings that Americans still feel to this day. Thanks for helping us try to guide us through this horrible, horrible time.

Doctor Joyce Brothers, I look forward to seeing you every day for the rest of the week.

BROTHERS: Thank you, Paula.

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