When the World Feels Unsafe: Making Sense of Frightening Public Events in Melbourne

A violent incident occurring in a familiar public space, such as the local Melbourne shopping centre, Northland, can evoke more than just immediate fear. It can shake our fundamental sense of safety and predictability, leaving us struggling to make sense of a world that suddenly feels more dangerous and chaotic. This process of trying to understand and integrate such an event is a natural human response, but it can be challenging and emotionally taxing.

After a frightening event, our internal map of the world can feel disrupted. Therapy can help us navigate the confusion and find a new path to understanding and safety.

Challenging Our Core Beliefs

Most of us navigate the world with a set of core beliefs, often unstated, about our safety, the general goodness of others, and the predictability of life. These beliefs help us feel secure enough to engage with daily activities. A sudden, senseless act of public violence can shatter these assumptions:

• "The world is a safe place" can be replaced by "The world is dangerous and unpredictable."

• "People are generally good" can be challenged by "People can be malicious and harmful."

• "It won't happen to me/here" can become "It could happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime."

When these core beliefs are disrupted, it's natural to feel disoriented, anxious, and vulnerable. The process of "making sense" involves trying to reconcile the shocking event with our existing understanding of the world, or adapting our worldview to accommodate the new, harsher reality.

Common Ways We Try to Make Sense:

• Seeking Information: We might try to understand the "who, what, when, where, why" of the event. This can sometimes provide a sense of understanding, but can also lead to information overload or exposure to distressing details, especially through media.

• Searching for Meaning or Explanation: Attributing a cause, even if it's "senseless violence," is part of how we process. Sometimes people turn to their values, faith, or philosophical beliefs to find a framework for understanding.

• Emotional Processing: This involves allowing ourselves to feel the range of emotions that arise – fear, anger, sadness, confusion, grief for victims. Suppressing these emotions often hinders the sense-making process. Talking about feelings with trusted others is a key part of this.

• Re-evaluating Safety Behaviours: We might change our routines, become more cautious in public, or think more about personal safety. Some of these changes can be adaptive, while others (if excessive) might lead to unhelpful avoidance.

• Connecting with Others: Sharing the experience and our reactions with others who "get it" can be incredibly validating and help normalise our responses. It reminds us we are not alone in our feelings.

The Role of Therapy in Processing and Meaning-Making

When a public event leaves you feeling persistently unsafe, highly distressed, or struggling to reconcile it with your view of the world, therapy can provide crucial support:

1. Validating Your Experience: A psychologist can normalise your reactions and help you understand that your feelings are understandable responses to an abnormal event.

2. Safe Emotional Expression: Therapy offers a confidential space to express difficult emotions without judgment. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to find a safe space to explore our own reaction, as many people in our lives may have opinions, agendas and beliefs that conflict with our own. Therapeutic spaces tend to hold spaces that can allow you to express yourself with safety.

3. Challenging Unhelpful Thought Patterns: If the event leads to overly generalised negative beliefs (e.g., "Nowhere is safe," "No one can be trusted"), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques can help examine and recalibrate these thoughts to be more balanced and realistic. While these thoughts might not seem particularly disruptive at first glance, they can become the basis for serious and pervasive issues later.

4. Rebuilding a Sense of Safety: Working on grounding techniques, anxiety management, and gradually re-engaging with life in a way that feels safe and manageable. This is particularly important when our body is reacting strongly to the event, even when we might not have particularly strong thoughts about it.

5. Narrative Reconstruction: For some, therapy involves constructing a personal narrative around the event that integrates the experience, acknowledges its impact, but also incorporates strengths, resilience, and a revised (but still functional) understanding of the world. This is about finding a way to carry the experience without it constantly defining your present.

6. Focusing on Values instead of Control: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help accept the reality that some events are unpredictable and out of our control, while refocusing energy on living a life aligned with personal values, even in the presence of difficult feelings.

An example:

Lena, who worked near the Northland shopping centre, wasn't present during the machete attack but was deeply affected by the news and the lockdown of her own workplace. In the following weeks, she found herself constantly anxious on her commute and questioning the safety of public spaces she'd previously enjoyed in Melbourne. Her belief that "Melbourne is a safe city" felt shattered. In sessions, Lena explored how the event had impacted her core beliefs. Her therapist helped her process her fear and anger, and they used CBT techniques to challenge her new generalised thought that "everywhere is dangerous." They also focused on her values of community and connection, and Lena found that actively participating in a local neighbourhood initiative helped her regain a sense of agency and positive engagement, slowly rebuilding her feeling of safety within her community. She also found advocacy rewarding and contacted her local leaders to explore how our government could help address systemic issues that led to violence.

(Please note: This is a fictional vignette created for illustrative purposes only.)

Finding Your Way Forward When the World Feels Shaken

Shocking public events can temporarily destabilise our sense of security and our understanding of the world. The process of making sense of such experiences and integrating them is an active one that takes time and self-compassion.

If you find yourself struggling to cope after a frightening public event or if your sense of safety feels persistently compromised, the general and clinical psychologists at Shaw Psychology in Melbourne are here to help. We provide a supportive environment to process your reactions, develop coping strategies, and work towards rebuilding your sense of security and meaning.

Contact us today on (03) 9969 2190, visit our website at www.shawpsychology.com to learn more, or book an initial consultation directly online here: https://bit.ly/bookshawpsychology.