Florida is hit by 40% of the hurricanes that impact the United States. Still, severe weather can bring feelings of fear and anxiety and other impacts to mental health, no matter how many storm seasons you may have weathered.

How does extreme weather affect mental health? Is storm anxiety normal?

Weather related anxiety and feeling nervous can be normal, yes. As with all mental health conditions, storm anxiety and if it is a problem falls on a spectrum. If your anxiety about storms is impacting your daily functioning outside of severe weather predictions being an immediate threat to your area, this could be abnormal and a sign to seek professional help.

Anxiety and fear serve a purpose in our system for our physical and mental health, despite how uncomfortable or distressing they might be. Severe storms are something to pay attention to! They can present real danger. So when are being told that there is an impending severe weather threat and we are receiving severe weather alerts, our brains are going to react in ways to make sure we are paying attention. That is what pushes us to take action to prepare and make decisions.

How can I calm or prevent my storm season anxiety?

Having unlimited information at our fingertips via the internet is a double-edged sword. Although we are more connected than ever, we are also exposed to more global suffering than we would experience without the tool of the internet. Our brains just haven't evolved yet to process all of that, so our system gets overwhelmed. Here are some reminders as you prepare and live through the storm season.

• Limit the information you take in. Avoid sensationalized content about a storm and the potential impacts or aftermath. Be mindful of watching videos on social media.

• Get your weather information from a trusted and factual source, like the national weather service and local meteorologists.

• Know the times that you need to check in with media and leave the rest of your time to focusing on what is within your control, like preparing and taking care of yourself and your loved ones. The National Hurricane Center issues advisories every three hours when a tropical storm, hurricane watch, or hurricane warning is in effect starting at 5 am. Set alarms to check in when a new advisory is published so you don't feel the need to be glued to your news sources.

• Get prepared. Restock your kits at the start of the hurricane season. Include important documents, medications, water, non-perishable food, batteries, flashlights, an additional way to receive weather information like an NOAA weather radio, pet food, pet documentation, and pet medication. Be sure to have enough supplies for each person or animal in your group for three days.

• So much of our anxiety about storms comes from not having control of the situation. Focusing on what is within our control is a proven way to combat storm anxiety, fear, and helplessness. Have a plan for if a severe weather event is forecast for your area and you are advised to evacuate. Do you have family members or friends that you would plan to stay with? Make an evacuation plan with them. There are many community resources that provide a safe storm shelter for those who are in need.

How do I know I need to see someone for my storm stress? Isn't everyone feeling stressed out after something like this?

Most people will be at elevated stress levels in the days leading up to and following a severe storm. This is to be expected until normalcy can be resumed. This can even include the symptoms that we typically see with a diagnosable trauma disorder. The keys to pay attention to are timing, the intensity of the experience, and the impact to your daily life.

Not everyone that experiences trauma will develop a trauma disorder. In fact, it happens about 20% of the time. Being in the 80% of those who do not develop a disorder is not an indication of strength or mental fortitude. It just means that your brain fully processed everything this time around.

Signs that your brain and body need some time and help to get through something traumatic include the following:

• Re-experiencing the event, referred to as flashbacks. You feel like it is happening again. You may have the physical sensations that you did at the time such as a racing heart, sweating, feeling like you can't catch your breath, etc.

• Muscle tension and other physical symptoms

• Feel panic or experience a panic attack, sometimes referred to an an anxiety attack

• Not being about control your intrusive thoughts about what happened and it causes you emotional or physical distress.

• Having nightmares or interrupted sleep.

• Staying away from or avoiding things that remind you of what happened. Pay attention to how you think and act when aspects of what happened come to mind. For example, when it rains, when night falls, when you hear the alert system in your phone go off, when you feel or hear wind, when it gets dark and cloudy, etc. Does your concern impact your routine if one of these factors are present?

• Noticing you feel anxious, tense, on edge, can't relax, or other ongoing negative emotions

• Struggle to concentrate

• Struggle to feel positive emotions like positivity or happiness

• Are feeling uncharacteristically irritable or are having emotional outbursts

• Feel like you are seeing the world as an unsafe place now

What happens in the brain of someone in the 20% you mentioned?

When we go through something significant our brain gets overwhelmed, freezes up, and starts misfiring. This leads to incomplete processing of an experience and your brain continues to cycle through trying to make sense of what happened. This means you are re-experiencing the event over and over and over again in different ways. Your brain is doing this because it is trying to process through what happened completely, but it can't do that in pieces. It has to be the memories and the feelings together. So you may have all the factual memories, but your brain and body still haven't processed what you felt (emotionally and physically) or vice versa.

Another way to try to understand this is to think of yourself looking in a mirror. You see a complete image that you don't have to try to understand. You see your face, your hair, your outfit, and your brain "gets it" and moves on. No more time dedicated to the task. Your brain then stores your memory of looking at yourself in the mirror on a back shelf and only takes it off that shelf if you ask it to. Now, imagine that you take a hammer and smash that mirror. There would be pieces everywhere, all different sizes. You would have to reprocess what you could see in each small piece. Since some of those pieces would be pretty small, you may only see one side of your face, the top half of your outfit, etc. The image is incomplete. Your brain is taking a lot more effort to figure out what it is looking at. Now imagine trying to put that mirror back together. You would be moving the pieces around multiple times before you got it to fit back together again. Maybe it would take you hours. Maybe there would always be a piece missing that slid across the house and under the couch that you can't find. Trauma treatment guides your brain through the process of neatly gathering all of those pieces, sorting them, and putting them back together so your brain "gets it" again and doesn't have to spend time trying to figure out what it is looking at. Your reflection is complete again.

Applying this to experiencing trauma and symptoms associated with it, it can take your brain months or even years to fully process a traumatic event. All while it is making you re-experience parts of the event in obvious or not so obvious ways. Additionally, what about that piece that might have slid under the couch that you never found for that mirror? A therapist can help you find it and reduce anxiety and fears.

What can be done for my storm anxiety?

Trauma treatment such as Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) are all effective for helping your brain and body calm symptoms in multiple ways including short-term calming and resolving the root problem so you can get back to your life and uninterrupted daily activities.

Bad weather and storms force us to pay attention, heed weather warnings, and take it day by day. Remember, we are in this together and IBWHC is here to support you and our community in whatever ways we can.