Psychology: Life-Changing Event, Essay Example

“Mass shootings are a first-line traumatic event that can potentially trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in people who are directly exposed, as life and limb are under direct and violent threat. Children, in particular, are even more vulnerable; multiple studies have shown that childhood trauma has more lifelong and pervasive effects on young developing psyches, both in terms of their psychological worldview, and their physiological systems that handle stress and anxiety. On a secondary level, the threat of mass shootings throughout schools is also damaging to mental health; safety and security are always paramount to a child’s healthy psychological development, and this constant anxiety and sense of danger will disrupt that sense of security, and put all children at risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders.”

Part 1: Defining Life Changing Event

According to CENGAGE (2019), the definition of life events is as follows: “discrete experience that disrupts an individual’s usual activities, causing a substantial change and readjustment.” Such events are seminal in a person’s life and often change the direction of the trajectory of their lives and include injury or illness, divorce, marriage and losing a job or simply taking on a new job. In the expansive corpus of literature on stress, life events were traditionally categorized as being major stressors just like poverty and disability, which are considered as “chronic strains” (“Life Events”). Indeed, certain life events influence how a person acts in addition to his or her behavior. A seminal event in my life was the mass shooting that recently took place at Saugus High School on November 4, 2019—am event in which a white shooter killed five of his fellow schoolmates prior to committing suicide. The event threatened the lives of all individuals in California including myself due to my engagements in social settings. I am constantly involved in public gatherings, music events and college attendance which brings the risk closer.  I knew of people who had children as well as siblings in Saugus High School some of who lost their loved ones while others got injured.

The perpetrators shot hundreds of bullets at all individuals at the scene who were from different ages, race, genders and sexual identities. Children, staff members, visitors and parents in the school at that time were scared and confused as they ran for safety. The attack is a vaunted experience that will haunt me for the rest of my life and has completely changed my behavior so that I would always feel safe. After hearing about this event, I thought of the involved individuals in the positive and negative aspects due to their positions. The victims were just innocent people trying to make a change by studying or contributing to the process. Shooters on the other hand were merciless and full of hate against the school occupants.  Furthermore, school districts have increasingly embraced a preventative strategy so that there are firm preventative measures that are fully entrenched within the classrooms, principal’s office, and other higher-members to ensure that no mass shootings will every transpire in the future.

Others involved in this event who survived are enduring the pain, fear, guilt, and nightmares due to the events they experienced on that date. I had this mentality that terrorist or mass shootings mainly target locations with influential people like politicians and public figures. I could not associate such a violent attack with a high school scene and expected such to happen in high end hotels, government officers and other similar place. It was also a misconception to think that such attackers could show mercy on such innocent people especially when children are involved. I however changed that perspectives after the Saugus High School shooting. It is now clear that mass killings do not target specific people but focus on harming crowds to cause as much damages as possible. Terrorism is all about causing pain to anyone as long as it creates the needed attention or develop fear in a region. That explains why they were randomly shooting at everyone regardless of their race, age, or even the physical state.

The event completely changed my believes about public attacks and how those involved push through the event. Even though I was not directly involved, it left me with some thoughts of how people can lack humanity to such extents of hurting innocent people trying to make a change in the society. The terrorists are no longer human according to my perspective as they did not show any mercy to these innocent children and all the other people involved. They anticipate the bloodshed more than sending any message to the target parties. It does not matter to them the kind of people who get hurt in the process as long as they murder as many people as possible. It would be realistic to let the younger children or those with disabilities free but that does not matter to them. My religion codes were tested in many ways as most of these attackers were from certain religious groups. I started seeing some religions as manipulations towards the followers hence causing harm to the individuals. The news about shot children also made me question my faith as I believe we are under the protection of a powerful being. I kept asking myself a lot of questions on why God would allow this to happen but latter came into terms with it.