Something Scary Happened The Other Day and I Wanted To Talk To You About It | Mel Robbins Podcast

(ticking sound) (intense music) Today's show is going to be a little bit different. It's gonna be a tough one. I was a witness to a horrible tragedy. Even if it's hard, or it feels very uncomfortable to listen to parts of what we're gonna talk about, this is important. I'm gonna take you back a few weeks ago to a moment as these events were unfolding, where I was sitting in a chair in a bedroom and I decided to hit record, and just start talking to you. (intense music) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I wanna start the conversation today by just thanking you for being here. Today's show is going to be a little bit different, and the reason why is, it's gonna be a tough one. So, I wanted to give you a little context before we get started. When I launched the Mel Robbins Podcast less than a year ago, my promise to you was we would share life together, and I would use this show as a way for us to support one another through the good, and unfortunately sometimes the bad. And that brings me to what I wanna talk to you about today, and that is, how do you support yourself when something bad happens? See, a few weeks ago, I was a witness to a horrible tragedy, and while it did not directly impact me or my family or anyone that I knew personally, it still affected me profoundly. It affected my family, and it affected the community that we're in. And I recorded my feelings in real time as I was processing the events that were unfolding, because that's how I process my emotions, by talking about them. And when I shared what had happened with my teammates and with my extended family, what was really interesting is that almost every single person had their own story about having been a witness to another person or family's tragedy. And the truth is, when you find yourself in that kind of situation, none of us have the tools to really process how it affects you, or how to deal with your complicated feelings of guilt, and fear, and sadness, and grief. And these conversations with my friends and family, it just reinforced the fact that this is a really important topic to discuss. How do you support yourself when you witness something horrible? And it's so important that that's what we're gonna talk about today. Even if it's hard, or it feels very uncomfortable to listen to parts of what we're gonna talk about, this is important. Now, when all of this, uh, was happening, I had the benefit of speaking with Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald, who is a renowned researcher and expert in trauma. And what I learned from Dr. McDonald a couple of weeks ago, it helped me process the traumatic experience and events that were unfolding here, and I hope and I know it's gonna help you or someone that you love do the same. So, before we get started, I really want you to decide if this may or may not be the right episode for you to listen to today. If it's not, I completely understand. This will be here for a resource for you when you're ready, and I do hope you will join me again when our next episode releases in a few days. And if this is the right episode for you, let's get started. I'm gonna take you back a few weeks ago to a moment as these events were unfolding, where I was sitting in a chair in a bedroom and I decided to hit record, and just start talking to you. A couple of nights ago, we were cooking dinner. It was about 6:30 at night, and all of a sudden I heard all of these horns honking, and not like honk, honk, honk, honk, honk, but like (hons) you know, when like somebody lays on a horn? And I'm thinking, "What the hell is that?" And it had been a really windy, stormy day. Like, it hadn't really rained, but it was supposed to rain, but the waves that day on the ocean here where we rent this awesome little house, they were enormous. I mean, enormous. We had been out at the beach, and it's a very shallow beach and there are lifeguards there, but the flags were yellow and then they turned to red, and I was only in up to like my knees. These waves were crashing way over my head, and I'm like 5'8". And so, they were big, monstrous ra- waves. There was a riptide warning. And when it comes to the ocean, I don't screw around. The second that red flag is up, we're out. The second they say those words, "Riptide," we're not screwing around. So, we had fun in the waves. We then came home, we're cooking dinner, and now all of a sudden these horns are honking. It's like, (honks) . And so I put the, you know, spoon down, I'm stirring the pasta, and I go out to the front porch and I look down to the right, and there are four cars. There was a tan suburban, that is gonna be seared into my memory, there's a tan suburban, and I think that's the car where the horn was like (hons) . And then all these other cars, and more cars coming up, and there were people on the road, because the road is right on the ocean. It goes road, and then all of this kind of brush, and then tons of rocks, and then the waves were crashing. And everybody had their hands up in the air, and they were trying to wave and flag down this police boat.... that was out in the ocean in these huge waves, and I'm thinking, "Is there a boat in distress?" Because that happened two summers ago. There was a boat that kind of ran out of gas and kind of crashed up on these rocks. Everybody was okay. So, I'm looking around for a distressed boat, and they keep flagging these boats, and flagging these boats, and flagging these boats, and flagging these boats, and I'm like, "What the heck is going on?" And we had guests staying with us, and the dad of the couple staying with us quickly checked Twitter and was like, "It looks like there's a missing swimmer." And I'm like, "Oh my God, I wonder if they have eyes on him." And the boats start turning around and heading away from the people that are honking their horns and trying to get their attention. And I don't know what hit me, but I have this, like, first responder instinct. I immediately picked up the phone, I called 911, and the first attempt, I didn't get through. And that's a scary thing when you don't get through on 911. I hang up, I call again, and it sort of clicks through, but no human being picks up. So, I hang up again, and now I'm starting to get panicked that there is a swimmer out there, that these people have eyes on them, that the waves are so big, the wind is so loud, the rocks are so big between them and the police boats. The police boats are now way off in the distance. They've gone in a completely different direction. Holy smokes, holy smokes. I call a third time, I get the dispatcher. "Uh, what, what's the reason you're calling, ma'am?" "I'm calling about the swimmer. There's somebody in the water." "Uh, do you have eyes on them?" "No. However, there's a huge group of people on the shore. They're 100 feet from me," and I say, "You have to get through to the police boat. You have to tell them to turn around. They are driving away from the accident. Turn around, turn around." I hear her say, "Hold on," and then she clicks through, it must have been the police boat, she said, "This is the third call we've had about a swimmer. Um, you're going in the wrong direction. Turn the boats around. Turn the boats around." I climb up on the railing on the porch. I'm now, I don't know how I balanced. I'm standing on this railing. I've got this huge red and white towel, and I am waving it back and forth, and it's whipping all over the place because of the wind. And I'm saying to the dispatcher, "Look for the red and white towel. Look for the red and white towel, and then look before it, to the left, the people on the shore. Go there, go there. Keep the surfers on your left. Turn around, turn around." And I hear her saying, "You're going in the wrong direction. Turn around, turn around. Look for the red towel." So, she's talking directly to the police boat. The police boat turns around and starts heading back in our direction, and then I start telling her, "After the surfers, look for the people on the road. Look for the people on the road. They've got eyes on something." The boats pull up in front of where the people are. I'm like, "Oh my God." I give the phone to my daughter, and I'm like, "Ken, run down to those people. Keep the 911 operator on the phone." She's like, "But we're gonna lose her." I said, "Just try. Get down, get down there. Get them on the phone with her so she can communicate with the people on the shore to the boat." So, she goes running down. Now the helicopters show up, search helicopters flying all over the place, and more information is coming in, and now my heart is sinking. And my daughter races down. There's more people down there. The police boats have gathered kind of offshore. Because there are so many rocks, you can't come in. But here's the problem: it's so windy and the waves are so huge, nobody can communicate with one another. And the call drops, the reception's terrible down here, and for three and a half hours, this search and rescue mission played out in front of the beach house we rent. Oh my God, there's a helicopter off in the distance right now, and I feel myself, like, getting emotional. And the helicopters were going back and forth, and the search spotlights, and the dive teams, and the, the sheriff's boats, and people on the road, and it was just horrible. And the weather got so bad that the dive teams couldn't do their job. And at 9:30 at night, they called off the search and declared it a recovery mission, not a search and rescue. And the next morning when we woke up, there were people pacing on the beach, and there were helicopters and dive teams, and Chris and I were leaving to go out of town for a wedding, and I felt terrible that we were leaving. And I climbed into bed with our son and just held him really tight, and I felt so much heartache for this family. I just... Ugh. And all weekend long while we were gone, the search and recovery was happening, and they were trying to find him. And I just think, "What could I have done? What could I have done? I, I should have run down there sooner. I should have done something." And I keep thinking about it over and over and over again, and I didn't... I- I- I just... And part of me feels like, "Why do you feel so bad? You don't have a right to feel bad, Mel. I mean, it's not like this is your son. This is not somebody in your family or somebody that you even knew." And yet I do. And so, one of the things that I did is, I've reached out to my therapist, I've reached out to a trauma specialist, and one of the things that trauma researchers say is that it is incredibly important to process what happened, not by just thinking about it, but by talking about it. And that by talking about it, and making sense of the story, and putting it in context, you also allow yourself the ability to start to process all the feelings. Because it's not just...... the watching or witnessing or experiencing something that can be traumatizing. What I think has been really challenging for me is processing all of the conflicting feelings that have come up over and over and over again, and also stopping my brain from just thinking about the family, or reliving it over in my mind, or thinking about how I might have been more effective or more helpful, feeling terrible, and honestly, torturing myself over it, and then feeling bad that I am because I don't even know this person personally. And I wanted to talk about it because there is so much research about how your brain and nervous system process traumatic experiences, and there's a lot of misconceptions about this. And so, in case you're somebody that is trying to process something traumatic that you've either been a part of or that you've recently witnessed, I knew that this would be helpful to you. And if you've experienced any kind of trauma in your life, and you find that it comes up and you get retriggered by the sound of a car pulling in the driveway, or a beer can cracking open, or a certain song. For me, I hear a helicopter and I'm right back there, like boom. I hear the words riptide, rip current, I'm right back there. I will always think about this. When I step out on my deck and I look down to the right, I still envision that tan Suburban there. And there's a reason neurologically why this keeps happening, and there are things that you can do to take all of this experience and the feelings that have come up, whether it's happening right now or it's something from your past that you wish wouldn't keep coming up, there are things that you can proactively do to help take this experience, present or past, and process it in a healthy way backed by research so that it finds its home in your brain and in the story of your life. And so, that's what we're gonna do today. As you put your arm around me (sighs) , we're gonna walk and talk, and we're gonna bring in Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald to help us understand what's happening when something traumatic happens, and more importantly, what do we do about it, and we're gonna welcome her to the walk and to this conversation when we come back. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and today, I am so grateful that you're here. I just appreciate you being here with me. I can feel energetically, you got your arm around me as we talk about this very traumatic experience that I had just a few days ago. Um, so Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald, thank you so much for being here with us. I was just telling everybody listening about this experience of watching a search and rescue mission for a missing swimmer turn into a recovery mission that took place in front of the house we're renting for literally the last four to five days.