The Gulf Oil Spill – a Cultural Crisis of Unprecedented Proportions

“The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster feels far worse to shrimper Ricky Robin than Katrina, even though he's still haunted by memories of riding out the hurricane on his trawler and of his father's suicide in the storm's aftermath. The relentless spill is bringing back feelings that are far too familiar to Robin and others still dealing with the physical and emotional toll wrought by Katrina five years ago. "I can't sleep at night. I find myself crying sometimes," said Robin, of Violet, a blue-collar community on the southeastern edge of the New Orleans suburbs, along the highway that hugs the levee on the Mississippi River's east bank nearly all the way to the Gulf. Psychiatrists who treated people after Katrina and have held group sessions in oil spill-stricken areas say the symptoms showing up are much the same: Anger. Anxiety. Drinking. Depression. Suicidal thoughts.” Oil spill's psychological toll quietly mounts

By Janet McConnaughey and Mitch Stacy A.P.

The Gulf oil spill is a cultural crisis of unprecedented proportions and it deeply affects us on social, political, environmental, and economic levels. The broader concerns are often the most discussed on a national scale, but there are intensely personal psychological and emotional ramifications to what has happened in our southern waters. Especially hard hit are the residents along the coast who are still recovering psychologically and emotionally from Katrina’s devastation. But we are all: as a country; as a global community; a human community; suffering a blow to our sense of safety in “place”. We are suffering from the grim reality that nothing is sacred: our homes, our livelihood, the intimate relationship we have with our natural environment, all can be destroyed without warning. Understandably, it is doubly hard to bear traumatic destruction that comes at the hands of those we trust and depend upon for our security, emotionally and financially.

Trauma is defined as an experience that falls outside the range of normal human experience. Since the horror of 9-11, there have been a number of formerly unthinkable events around the globe and the United States has responded with empathy and personal, corporate, and governmental aid. After too many disasters and too many responses, our responsiveness and resilience are blunted. Even the most empathetic people among us become cold and cynical to the cries of the survivors as a natural response to our own helplessness. We can’t bear hearing them anymore because our own helplessness is too painful to bear. The end result of long-standing helplessness and futility is the stage of grief known as denial, a “frozen” state where occasional feelings of sadness, emptiness, restless anxiety, and anger arise to activate our natural patterns of defense. Those at the center of a disaster who have been suffering from the chronic stress of poverty and poor physical health have little resilience and few coping strategies. These chronically stressed people can rapidly decompensate to self-destructive, self-sabotaging behaviors such as those reported in the article quoted above. The most common responses are increased drug and alcohol consumption, explosiveness, domestic violence, criminal behavior, and suicidal thoughts, but more often it is a crippling state of depression that prevents activism and recovery.

It is no wonder, then, that there is a call from the coastal states and their mental health professionals for funds to be set aside for dealing with this ongoing crisis and its aftermath. However, it bears repeating: regardless of geography, we are all experiencing this intrusion on our sense of what is normal and acceptable. And the feeling of powerlessness to do anything about it can be overwhelming. If we’re normally healthy and have good coping mechanisms, we may fall into a deep and painful period of unrest and despair. Or we may do what Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who wrote "Emotional Intelligence" has pointed out in his recent release, "Ecological Intelligence" that people react in an unproductive way which can actually subvert the kind of change we really need:

“Finding other people to blame has always been a favored ploy of the human psyche. Psychoanalysts call this "projection," the casting out of our own failings and pasting them on someone - or something - other than ourselves... By imagining some disembodied power that has victimized us - "those greedy corporations" say - we avoid having to examine our own impacts. It's a convenient arrangement, one that lets us deflect our discomfort at facing the ways in which we add to the onslaughts against the natural world.” Daniel Goleman

Ecological Intelligence (pg. 38-39)

The outrage, the sense of righteous indignation, and the painful despair we feel over the misuse of power by those who do not represent our interests or our core values can be channeled towards change and activism. However, change requires that we look at how we support the status quo by proxy: that is, how we continually value a lifestyle dependent upon an economic structure that sucks the life out of people without regard to social justice, and resources out of the earth without regard to toxic waste and environmental destruction. We must become conscious of our own participation in this dysfunctional, abusive system just like those living in debilitating family systems must do. We must shed our reliance on them by breaking away from the little they provide to us at such a great personal and emotional cost. We must if we choose to create a future that can support Life. At this time, we are supporting a culture of Death – in the Gulf of Mexico, in Nigeria, in Afghanistan, and etc. In her own Voice