COLUMBINE - A Mental Health Counselor's Perspective

Marjorie Demshock, M.S., C.C.M.H.C.

The unthinkable has happened again. Students with guns and bombs attacked their fellow classmates and teachers in Littleton, Colorado this April. Already the call has gone out for more guards, metal detectors, and better gun control laws. Everyone, including me, is wondering. "How could this happen to another suburban school district?"

The warning signs were there - strange garb, isolation, anger, threats, violent dreams, violent videos, a preoccupation with Hitler, the occult, guns and bombs. Why didn't anyone do something? How could a psychology teacher think a dream about massacring people at a mall was a normal dream? How could parents think guns, extra cans of propane, and a store of fireworks innards were normal playthings for teenage boys? How could America Online think there was nothing wrong with a Web site devoted to violence and death? Were people ignorant, foolish, or just in denial?

What can we learn from this tragedy? What can we do to prevent something like this from happening again? What do we do as counselors to reach out to kids who are suffering or in trouble? What do we need to do as a nation to help ourselves heal? How do we reach angry boys before their hurt, fear, and shame explode into violence?

It will take weeks, months, maybe even years to answer some of these questions. In this column, I will share some of my thoughts about this tragedy and its aftermath.

First of all, we seem to live in a death-denying, violence-worshipping society. How many of us can see the contradiction in this statement? Violence happens all around us in countless television shows, movies, video games, and CDs, yet we won't talk about death and grief and how violence destroys families and futures. A mother who lost her daughter in the Jonesboro shooting last year suggests that children who love violence be made to attend wakes and funerals to see what death is really like. I agree. Teenagers need to see what happens when someone is killed. Death education needs to be as much of a priority for staff and students as sex education is.

Columbine High School had a security guard who traded shots with one of the gunmen. He couldn't stop the killing when it was put into motion. By the time those students entered the school with their guns and their bombs and their plan of attack, it was too late to stop them. The time for intervention was much earlier - when the students began to share their violent poetry, or their violent dreams, or their violent video. They were trying to make their pain known in the way boys often do - through action. They were acting out their fear and self-loathing as anger. For many boys anger is the only socially acceptable emotion. Anger covers hurt and pain and shame. It masks the overwhelming powerlessness boys often feel. It's up to us as counselors to help boys find other ways for processing and releasing these powerful and potentially toxic emotions. Locking boys up in detention or jails is not the answer - it only isolates them further.

Boys need mentors. Boys need buddies. Boys need healthy outlets for their feelings. Helping troubled boys to communicate their emotions requires patience, a willingness to listen without judging or shaming, and constructive activities that can be engaged in with others. Nowhere are these needs more apparent than with students who are new to a school or who are struggling with difficult family situations.

Many times I have been called in to consult with the faculty and students in a local parochial elementary school. Each time, the issues are the same - how to help students express their frustrations appropriately, how to help them resolve their conflicts with each other more effectively. Often I am asked to work with individual students who are having difficulty fitting in. In each case, I work to understand what has been happening for these students in class, on the buss, in the playground. I invite them top share with me who they perceive the leaders in their class to be, what they think makes for a good leader, what the students who are popular do or saw that make them so well-liked. Together we look at who among the leaders is most open and approachable and what possible interests they might share in common. We then rehearse how to approach these students in a friendly, natural way.

Most importantly, all these discussions take place while we are playing a game or working on a project together. This helps them to relax and be comfortable. Sometimes it takes time before they are able to answer the questions asked or to formulate a plan of action. I don't mind. I forever remember that conflict resolution and building self-esteem are processes and all processes take time.

Our schools don't need more armed security guards; they need more caring, compassionate counselors, social workers, and mental health specialists who are trained to see the warning signs in their various manifestations. Children show their feelings through their artwork - the drawings they doodle on their notebooks and their test papers. Children show their feelings in their writings and projects. Violent drawings and writings can never be dismissed as "just a phase they are going through." Often children who grow up with controlling, abusive parents are warned not to tell; very rarely are they told not to write or to draw. Dreams are the mind's way of processing everyday experiences and feelings in a symbolic way. I wonder what would have happened if that psychology teacher had invited his student to sit down with a guidance counselor, school psychologist, school social worker, or mental health professional and begin to explore what was happening in his life that he was seeking to process in that dream.

Children need rituals to deal with transition, loss, and change. We can see this need being acted out now in Littleton. Students and family members are remembering their dead classmates, children, and teacher with wooden crosses, flowers, balloons, and prayers. When tragedy strikes we need to grieve, to give outward expression to all that is in our hearts, minds, and spirits. Rituals help us to do this.

Talking also helps. We need to remember all that the person who died was about - her hopes, dreams, goals, accomplishments, and attributes. We honor his memory by recalling stories of times shared together - both the good and the bad. We keep him/her alive by supporting what we know was nearest and dearest to his/her heart.

Loss takes time to work through. When loss occurs on such a massive scale, it takes an even longer time. Sudden, violent deaths are the hardest deaths to grieve because they break in on us so dramatically and unexpectedly. It takes time for the shock and the sense of unreality to wear off. The students of Columbine High School need to go back to their school and begin the slow processes of acknowledging the reality of what happened, of mourning the loss of all that was before the shootings happened, and of finding new positive ways to reconnect with each other and their school. The best way to work through terrifying and painful experiences is to face them head-on in the presence of a lot of support.

The people of Littleton need our prayers and support. We, as a nation, need to let them know that we care and that we are there for them.

We also need to be present to our own students and children. We need to be available to answer their questions as honestly and accurately as possible. We need to be present to them in real and concrete ways. We need to invite them to share their pain, their fears, and their shame whenever they want with the assurance that we will be there to support them and even to cry with them. We need to advocate solutions that don't include guns or violence. We need to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open to all our young people no matter how different or strange they may seem. We need to be a safe harbor in the storm of emotions childhood and adolescence often are.

Will you stand with me in supporting the need for more school counselors, early intervention programs, community counseling centers, and rehabilitation programs. Violence is not the answer. More prisons are not the answer. More caring, loving, involved adults are. Reach out today and give a child a hug, a pat on the back, a kind word, an expression of confidence and belief. Together we can save our schools - one student at a time.

For more information on establishing a death education program in your school contact me at:

Marjorie S. Demshock, M.S., C.C.M.H.C.

Certified Mental Health Counselor

(631) 265-0305

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