Are the cows haunting you?

For the past week, I haven’t been able to sleep at night. I am crying at the slightest provocation and the other day when my son picked up a cup of beef flavoured noodles I snatched them out of his hand and just managed to stop myself screaming at him and accusing him of being a selfish, callous child with no feelings at all.  He’s not – he just likes 2 minute noodles but I am overly sensitive to the word beef this week.

Ever since 4 Corners aired the horrifying and brutal expose of the export cattle trade my life has been tainted with the images of cows being abused.  When I try to sleep at night I see the images of torture and terror that have embedded themselves in my brain.  The fear in the cow’s eyes becomes a surging anger that rises through my body and makes me want to save every animal in the world and when I realise how impossible that is, it subsides and it leaves me feeling intensely sad.

This sadness has permeated everything that I have done this week and it’s crept its way into my reactions. I see a cat outside and I wonder whether it has a home, and whether the people in that home are kind to the cat, then I remember that all over the world there are people abusing animals and it’s not just the cows in Indonesia and my mind runs away with me and I am upset for every animal and every human that is being abused.  Melodramatic? Oh totally, but very real for me.

And it’s not just when I see animals. I have been behaving strangely all week, on the verge of tears all the time, skittish and negative. A situation which has been exacerbated by the fact that I am not getting enough sleep at night because of these wretched images.  It seems these feelings are not just internal, in fact they are so obvious that Mia couldn’t help but ask if everything was okay.  I was briefly hesitant to tell her that I felt like crying about all that was wrong with the world because of a news programme aired 5 nights previously.  But she understood, because she said she’d also been feeling melancholy all week. It seems I’m not the only one.

Hundreds of people who watched the 4 Corners expose on Monday night are experiencing symptoms that are reminiscent of post traumatic stress syndrome. Yes, I know this sounds overly dramatic. It’s not about us, it’s about the cows, right? Of course. And we must try to harness whatever we’re feeling to DO something whether it’s signing a petition or contacting our state and federal members of parliament to let them know we want live export to be banned. Or whatever it is that makes you feel like you’re making a difference, however small.

However, even when you’ve done all this, there can still be some very real fallout for some of the people (not all) who saw those images and watched 4Corners.

There are many degrees of post traumatic stress syndrome. You don’t have to have been in a war or a bad accident or the victim of a crime to experience symptoms of PTSD. Sometimes, it’s enough to have witnessed something, even on TV.

Lynda Matthews, a specialist in the rehabilitation of people with posttraumatic mental health conditions from the University of Sydney says ” it’s pretty normal for people to feel uneasy, anxious, and distressed in the early days after exposure to a traumatic event, its part of a normal response to such an event. People’s natural recovery systems, their coping strategies and the support of family and friends, generally help them to recover but when this doesn’t happen and they continue to feel distressed and everyday activities are interrupted, then it’s possible that they could have Acute Stress Disorder or PTSD.”

She explains that “PTSD is a disorder that results from people’s exposure to events involving actual or threatened death or physical injury to themselves or other people and where they have responded with intense fear, helplessness or horror. To be diagnosed with the disorder a person needs to have symptoms of persistent intrusion (where they re-experience the event, e.g. nightmares, flashbacks), persistent avoidance (avoidance of thoughts, feelings, activities etc associated with the traumatic event), and increased arousal such as difficulty concentrating, difficulty sleeping, and hyper-vigilance. The symptoms need to be present for one month or longer and to significantly affect everyday functioning (social, work, family etc).”

New research shows that PTSD can develop in the unlikeliest of situations – like after giving birth (Mia wrote about that here) and it was discovered over a decade ago that over-exposure to television violence causes children to display symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress syndrome.So could I have developed post traumatic stress syndrome symptoms from watching this expose? Could you have?

Did you watch 4 Corners last week and are you still struggling with what you saw? Have you ever been witness to something that has affected you deeply? How did you manage it?

Please remember, the battle for the exporting of live cattle is not yet won.  You can register your vote against it in a petition here and here, visit the RSPCA site here or you can write directly to the Prime Minister here

If you are experiencing real post traumatic stress syndromes please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 for support.