Following the intense Hualien earthquake on April 6, the victims who were trapped, injured or lost loved ones might experience a series of complicated emotional responses, such as shock and denial, fear and anxiety, grief and loss, guilt and self-blame, anger and frustration, depression and hopelessness.
While treating past cases of acute post-disaster stress response, I have discovered that many people experience feelings of self-blame and depression.
More specifically, many believe that their actions and decisions caused the disaster or exacerbated its effects. For example, when an earthquake occurred, a father decided to bring his family to a location he deemed safe.
However, members of his family were still injured. The father experienced intense feelings of self-blame: “It’s my fault that my family got hurt.”
Another instance was one survivor of the 2021 Hualien Taroko Express train derailment.
While escaping, the survivor witnessed a victim beside them who had been crushed, crying out: “Save me, save me,” but had no power to help and fled the scene.
Following the incident, the survivor constantly blamed himself for the passenger’s death.
Thoughts of self-blame such as this have a profound and lasting impact, as they not only could worsen emotional burdens, but can also lead to depression, anxiety and thoughts or actions of self-harm.
This could ultimately impede their recovery and make it difficult for them to move forward and rebuild their life.
For this reason, it is critical to help victims become aware of their self-blame, re-observe the cause of disasters from various angles and objectively assess the impact of their actions and decisions.
Victims need help to understand that disasters are often unpredictable and uncontrollable, learn to forgive themselves and place their attention on living in the present and rebuilding their lives, rather than wallowing in self-blame from the past.
Guilt and self-blame are also quite common in children who experience disasters. They might mistakenly believe that their thoughts or behaviors are somehow connected to the disaster.
Children often think: “My thoughts or behaviors can affect the world around me, even causing natural disasters.”
I treated three cases of suspected post-traumatic stress response in elementary-school children following Typhoon Morakot in 2009. All three children exhibited feelings of self-blame and depression.
They believed that their actions — stealing a wallet to go play in an Internet cafe, not listening to their father and opting to kick rocks outside instead of going inside to eat dinner, and getting into an argument with family, respectively — led to God’s punishment, triggering flooding.
Another instance was a child who, on his birthday, wished to have a day off from school.
When a typhoon later struck and caused the school to close, he believed it was his wishes that had caused the typhoon to hit.
In these situations, children mistakenly attribute their behaviors or thoughts as being the cause of disasters, leading to erroneous feelings of guilt and self-blame.
It is incredibly important that parents, caregivers, teachers and psychologists be aware of this and help children understand the real causes of disasters to lessen irrational feelings of self-blame.
Ko Hui-chen is a professor at Asia University’s Department of Psychology and president of the Taichung Clinical Psychologist Association.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS