Responding to local tragedy

Understanding the Impact — Why This Affects All of Us

My heart sank as I signed onto social media yesterday and read about the tragedy that took place in our community. A tragic event that claimed the life of a young adult and impacted so many junior high students and their families. Reading the information left me with a heaviness on my heart for all involved — the students on the bus, the parents reading the news or receiving a phone call, all of the families affected — that I could not shake all day.

As I woke up this morning, I wanted to write a few things in hopes of helping those impacted by this event.

In this post, I want to cover some basics of how tragic events impact our brain and our stress response systems. This is not intended to provide a mental health diagnosis for anyone, treat PTSD, replace individual therapy, or address the complex needs of those living with PTSD. It's meant to offer psychoeducation — to help us better understand the impact of this event on each of us, so we can better support the people around us.

This Touches More People Than You Might Think

It's important to note that horrific events like the one yesterday will have an impact on our stress response systems. Each person will be affected differently — some may develop symptoms that meet the full diagnostic criteria for PTSD, while others may show behaviors, emotional responses, and symptoms without meeting that full threshold. Both experiences are real, and both deserve care.

We've all heard the term PTSD, and at times people use it loosely — some seriously, some half-jokingly. Before going further, it's worth understanding what the diagnosis actually requires, because it helps show just how many people in our community this event may touch — not only the students on the bus, but their parents and caregivers, classmates who weren't there, and neighbors who are simply holding the weight of it.

A full PTSD diagnosis involves several criteria, not just exposure — including symptoms, their duration, and their impact on functioning. I'm not including all of that here, and this post isn't meant to diagnose anyone. What I do want to share is the first criterion, because it's useful for understanding just how many people in our community this event may have touched. The DSM-5's first criterion for PTSD is exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, which can happen in any of these ways:

• Directly experiencing the traumatic event.

• Witnessing, in person, the event as it happened to others.

• Learning that the event happened to a close family member or close friend (when the death was violent or accidental).

• Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to distressing details of the event — for example, first responders or professionals repeatedly exposed to the aftermath. (This particular criterion doesn't apply to exposure through media, TV, or pictures, unless it's work-related.)

Again, this is just one piece of a much larger diagnostic picture — I'm not suggesting everyone touched by this event will develop PTSD, or trying to diagnose anyone through a blog post. What I want you to see is how many different doorways lead to being affected by something like this. The students on the bus who lived it. The bus driver. Those of us on social media who read the frightening initial reports. The students who heard their classmates were involved. The first responders on the scene. Grief and stress don't stay confined to the people closest to the event — they ripple outward.

Why We Can't Stop Thinking About It

Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of our experiences. The brain is always at work making associations — it's a predictive machine, taking templates built from old experiences and using them to anticipate what comes next.

When something doesn't make sense — like a tragic accident — our brain tries to solve it. It replays the scenario, searching for something that will help it "make sense" of what happened or what could have gone differently. This might show up as daydreaming during the day, or as dreams while we sleep, where our mind tries once more to work through it.

But in this situation, there is no solving it. A life was suddenly lost, and there's no way to make that make sense. When the brain can't find resolution, it can put us on a kind of loop — reliving the moment again and again, searching for an answer that isn't there.

This isn't a flaw. It's what a healthy brain does when it's confronted with something that defies explanation. Understanding that can be a small relief in itself — you're not broken, and you're not alone in this.

In the next post, I'll talk about our various stress responses and the signs that tell us when a stress response needs more support than time and rest — and when it might be time to reach out to a professional. In the post after that, I'll share concrete strategies for parents, caregivers, and educators to help restore a sense of safety in the days ahead.