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Whether you are a survivor of the recent fires,
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an Angelino, or an empathetic citizen of the world,
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the recent devastation SoCal has faced has caused and can caused a
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variety of emotions. On a personal level,
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my home is in Altadena,
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my community is Altadina,
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and I'm severely just in pain because My neighbors don't have homes
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to come back to right now,
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our community, or special community that is a long time in
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the making. It's just grieving intensely right now,
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and it hurts, it's confusing.
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It's angering, it's sad,
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it's feeling gratitude while being guilty of being able to feel that
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It's not knowing what's gonna happen,
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it's. It's thinking today's OK,
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but tomorrow might not be from the Pacific Palisades to Altadino,
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we're all going through such different situations,
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whether we're going back to nothing or we're going back to something
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I'll be honest and vulnerable and say my mental health has
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severely been going. I've been going through it.
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I, the makeup isn't doing makeup anymore.
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Like you can see those bags,
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you can hear it in my voice,
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I'm. Triggered all the time by the watch app that I
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love that watch app but I hate it at the same time
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and life isn't normal.
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It's not, it doesn't feel normal.
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And we're humans and we're citizens of Los Angeles and we have
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to carry on and there's a lot of responsibility to just kind
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of pick up and and keep going and moving forward.
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And while there's been a ton of loss all throughout Los Angeles
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what we've seen online and in person is community.
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Whether it's our community being highlighted or our community showing up and
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showing out for what we've gone through,
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it's truly incredible, it's uplifting and it's inspiring and so here
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to guide us is Adriana Alejandre.
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She is the founder of Latinx Therapy.
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And she's here to answer some key questions about coping with loss
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managing emotions, and really supporting each other through this healing
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process. Hi Ariana Comosas,
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how are you? I am doing OK,
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very busy, very tired,
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but grateful to see the community come together during these times.
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What are things that I should or we should and shouldn't say
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to a fire disaster survivor?
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Some of the things that I'm hearing.
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at least you survived,
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or at least you're alive,
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right? Something to that extent.
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I think that minimizes the fact that they worked hard for all
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these other materialistic things,
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but still things that they worked very hard for,
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and they shouldn't be minimized or invalidated because they have some sort
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of sentimental value. Hearing about,
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details of the fire can also be harmful for them
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did you hear? About so and so did you hear that
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the fire got to this neighborhood or just like updates like that
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I think it's important to ask for consent.
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Like do you have capacity to hear the updates on where it's
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at right now? I think consent is very important and I
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hope that folks can also request for that,
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set some boundaries like,
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no, I'm not willing to hear that right now.
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Everything you said seems like it would comfort me and the people
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I know severely impacted.
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One other thing is like telling people be strong,
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no yore. This is a devastating and tragic,
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traumatic event. And so even if people cry,
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that is still them being strong.
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So I think we just have to eliminate that and then encouraging
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people to cry because that goes hand in hand with that resentment
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Crying is the same thing as a cough,
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as passing gas. It's just something that the body needs to
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release. And so I invite people to eliminate that as well
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and to allow people to cry.
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What are some reasons that someone might be experiencing survivor's guilt after
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surviving this tragedy and disaster that a lot of us have had
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to go through? Survivors' guilt can come due to various reasons
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perhaps it's because their house is the last one standing in the
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neighborhood on the block,
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perhaps it's because they didn't get physically injured.
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Or it's because their pet survived,
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or didn't get injured as well.
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It could be because they were able to recover more items than
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some of their neighbors were able to.
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there's all sorts of survivors guilt that we're going to
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come about from this incident.
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On a personal level,
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have been feeling a lot of what you've just described.
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What can someone do when,
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when they feel numb or disconnected?
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After experiencing this trauma.
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We're seeing that first weekend,
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first few days in where people are just numb and in shock
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overwhelmed by the amount of resources as well,
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very overstimulated. For some of them,
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they don't know the exact status of their homes because they can't
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are just not ready to accept any status,
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any information. And so I think we're seeing that kind of
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numbness for sure and then others that are not gonna be prepared
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to maybe because of the stigma,
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be prepared to accept their mental health state and I think
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in on the other side of things it's gonna be people that
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were not directly impacted,
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people that are watching via social media,
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via the news stations,
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whether you're in Los Angeles or outside of the state of California
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people are just feeling disconnected because it's been like
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one thing after another for our immigration community,
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you know, we have the new president taking office in just
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a couple days, so that's another thing that's being added as
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another option for the Latino community is under my organization Latinx Therapy
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we are collecting names of therapists that specialize in trauma work and
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under all sorts of modalities and we have a.
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List ready for children and teens,
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therapy for adults, and then where we have a list of
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Spanish speaking therapists as well.
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So that's also an option and you can contact them by phone
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by email, or we have created a special line if
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that's too overwhelming and you prefer to be matched with a provider
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we will contact them.
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How can someone support others who were affected by the fire affected
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when they might be struggling themselves.
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First, we're going to see a group of people that are
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able to be on the ground,
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whether it's street cleaning,
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whether it's sorting stuff at donation centers,
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handing out things at distribution sites,
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but if you don't have energy for that,
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that's OK. Reserve the energy you have because this is gonna
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be long term and people are going to be needed later on
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Whatever you do have,
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just hang on tight until people tell.
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You what their needs are and you can even see via
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GoFundMe what some of those needs are from direct families and so
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the best way that we're hearing from former fire house fire survivors
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to help is by contributing cash in some way.
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Ariana, is it normal for someone to feel angry about the
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fire or suspicious of its causes or angry at people right now
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Just anger like how,
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how can we manage and deal with this anger?
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I know I've seen a lot of that.
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Anger is an emotion that is absolutely normal under these circumstances,
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and I encourage people to accept that anger and to channel it
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through advocacy, whether it's people that can fill out forms on
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your behalf because it's just too much for you,
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or people that can make calls for you,
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people that Fundraise for a public adjuster for example to advocate on
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your behalf for these insurance companies right maybe because we don't have
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that education so I think there's different ways that people can channel
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this anger but staying consistent,
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allowing this emotion to help you through and get the answers and
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Everything that you need right now and giving yourself permission as
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well to go to therapy so that you could process emotions and
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learn how to cope with it because all of this anger can
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also become resentment and a lot of children,
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youth, teenagers were also displaced and it's really important from a
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very young age that they also are given the opportunity.
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to heal, to understand their emotions,
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especially if they come from homes that stigmatize therapy and or mental
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health because you're gonna,
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you're gonna be seeing these,
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the effect of this anger as well in their adulthood and so
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we wanna make sure to prevent any of that as soon as
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possible. Why did you decide to donate your time and your
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organization and all of your work and expertise to our Latino community
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our community Angelin knows that.
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are going through this disaster.
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Trauma is, is something that I've always been interested in.
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I think it's something that I know personally in various different ways
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Whenever there have been disasters,
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whether they're natural disasters or human-made disasters,
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I have gotten involved and so I've set up pro bono lists
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like this for most of the mass shootings,
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Gilroy, the Walmart.
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Incident in El Paso,
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Pulse in Florida my network is national and so I
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felt like it just kind of makes sense because I have the
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reach and I have the training as well.
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I was deployed out for Hurricane Harvey as well through the Red
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Cross and assisted in the shelters out there,
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in 2017 and so I'm using my expertise from that
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and my passion to help my community,
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again because we have access to Spanish speaking therapists.
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And knowing that there's a stigma and barriers to access mental health
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services,, we wanna be able to use the resource
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that we are and help our people.
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what can LA residents do to reach out and try to get
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help? So we will be setting up as well support groups
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for the community. And so that list that I mentioned for
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pro bono psychotherapy. Can be found at tinyurl.com/latinosintherapy.
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alternatively, if that's overwhelming,
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they can call 818-239-5974 and so in that line they'll
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be able to reach either myself or someone else assisting and we'll
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help in English and in Spanish.
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To keep up with you on social media,
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where can our audience find you?
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You can find me on social media on all platforms Latinx Therapy
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and then if people are outside of Los Angeles and impacted needing
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a therapist for what they're seeing,
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maybe they're getting triggered,
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they could find a therapist using the directory at Latinxtherapy.com.
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Ariana. We really appreciate your time and everything that you're doing
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for our community. I know on a personal level Latinx therapy
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so truly thank you Ariana.
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