The Family Assistance Education & Research Foundation (FAERF) has been at the forefront of the evolution of emergency management, combining the head-heart approach for a fully integrated response to survivors of traumatic loss. Practicing consciousness in the workplace involves caring for people first, without exception.
Written by: Carolyn V. Coarsey, Ph.D.
January 2025
“Kundalini yoga provided Jung with a model of something that was almost completely lacking in Western psychology—an account of the developmental phases of higher consciousness..”
-Carl Jung
Maitri in Sanskrit, the ancient language on Hinduism, means benevolence, loving-kindness, friendliness and goodwill. Maitri is the first of the four sublime states and one of the ten states of mind, attitude, and behavior that leads to peace. Read on to learn what Eastern Philosophy and Human Services Response™ Training or Care Team Training have in common.
For me, the integration of Eastern Philosophy and Western Psychology came with the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Having published my doctoral dissertation in 1992, by then, I had worked with many airlines helping establish Care and Special Assistance Teams for their own accident response. I felt pretty confident in what I was doing until the 9/11 attacks.
Western Psychology Models form the basis of Human Services Response™ Training
Stabilizing Survivors’ Basic Needs: American Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy became the model for organizing the practical response for meeting basic needs of survivors and stabilizing them, ensuring that their basic needs were met in the initial stage of the crisis. Understanding practical needs and the organization’s role in meeting these needs fit perfectly with Psychiatrist Gerald Caplan’s Primary Prevention theory.
Re-establishing Equilibrium: Dr. Caplan taught that when people are confronted with overwhelming events where they cannot quickly gain control over their surroundings, they lose their equilibrium or balance. This loss of equilibrium causes the person to experience a greater dependency on those who are available to assist them. Further, his theory shows that a small amount of help offered during the dependency phase is greater than years of psychological help offered after the person has regained their equilibrium.
My own dissertation results had shown that when employees of a company are trained and empowered to assist survivors, these survivors reported fewer psychological symptoms of the five disorders associated with trauma. Within a few months after I published, employees were being trained to meet the needs of survivors while they were still dependent, and I was interviewing survivors who were articulating the success of the application of these models to real life accidents. To my gratification, survivors and employees were actually bonding in the aftermath of tragedies.
September 11, 2001
Approximately eighteen months after the tragedy, I met the parents of Flight Attendant Sara Low who died on American Airlines Flight 11, the first flight that hit the Twin Towers that morning. The Lows were presenters at the Family Assistance Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sara’s parents, Mike and Bobbie, along with her sister Alyson, joined us to share about their experience with the American Airlines CARE¹ Team following the crash. Mike and Bobbie talked to me about the end of Flight 11, after their presentation. They wondered why Sara had not called them, since other flight attendants had made calls to the ground and said good-bye to family members.
At the same Symposium, Kathie and Harry Ong, siblings to Betty Ann Ong who died on the same flight, made a presentation to the group about their CARE Team Experience. Betty Ann was already widely known as it was her voice that announced to the world, the events of September 11, as they broke the morning of the attacks. Kathie and Harry told us how American Airlines CARE Team leaders flew to their home and delivered to their parents a personal recording of Betty’s voice.
This discussion sparked even more curiosity for the Low family as to what was happening on board the flight that would have prevented Sara from calling them. While Mike and Bobbie knew I would have no more information than most of the world at that point, they asked me why I thought Sara had not called them. They asked me if I thought that Sara was alive at the time of the impact—or if she might have been murdered before the flight collided with the North Tower.
Western Psychology vs. Eastern Philosophy
In Western Psychology, the psychotherapist in interested in changing the consciousness of the client—from the outside.
– Alan Watts (American Psychologist 1915-1973)
The models explained above used in HSR™ Training, imply that those within the environment of survivors experiencing crisis, are using their power to influence how survivors move beyond the initial phase of a crisis. The questions that Mike and Bobbie, and most of us ask following events that shape our lives, like 9/11, require a great deal more of personal exploration and a great deal more internal work. My discussions with many survivors I have met over the years of my work have led me to explore healing from the personal/spiritual perspective – thus, Advanced Human Services Response™ Training was born.
Seven Emotional Centers – The Human Energy System
Energy centers are doorways, revolving between our material and spiritual selves, and between the material and spiritual universes. The first 12 centers are connected to the material self. Seven of these energy centers or chakras, are spinning wheels of light and they are body-based and operate according to physical laws. Chakras help us bring energy particles of the invisible world into the physical world. The other five connection points lie outside the physical body and operate according to physical principles.
-Cindy Dale (Spiritual Teacher, Writer)
Advanced Human Services Response™ Training will feature examples of survivors from multiple workplace tragedies discussing their evolution to consciousness in the context of the Human Energy System. Perhaps one of the most valuable parts of the training will be the aspects of self-care which a course in Maitri engenders. Stay tuned for more about the course and my book of survivors stories the new course is based on.
CURRENT HSR™TRAINERS WILL SOON BE SURVEYED AS TO SUBJECTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT.
STAY STUNED FOR UPCOMING SURVEY.
Mike and Bobby got their question answered about the end of Flight 11
Within the first year, Mike received an email from the FBI advising him that he had paid for the phone calls to the ground from American Airlines Flight 11. Sara had used a phone card that Mike paid for. After an eight-year fight, he was finally provided the binder containing the transcripts between American Airlines Ground Control and the flight attendants on board the flight. Mike and Bobbie learned that Sara and her fellow crew members worked to move passengers to the coach section, preventing them from seeing the injured and deceased crew members. The last announcement made from the flight advised the passengers that they were making an emergency landing in New York City—followed by impact.
Sara’s family received the information they needed and deserved to receive and they and the other flight attendants’ families were proud to tell the world about the bravery of the flight attendants on American Airlines Flight 11, September 11, 2001.
¹CARE is the acronym that American Airlines used initially to refer to their employee response team.