I recently had the privilege of being a member of the doctoral dissertation committee at Grand Canyon University. The candidate was Crystal Tutain, a disaster recovery officer with the American Red Cross who lives in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. His research examines senior disaster relief officials who survived Hurricanes Irma and Maria while leading recovery efforts for their communities.
This was one of the most interesting research studies I have ever reviewed career. Not just because of the dramatic stories of individuals. But because Tutein’s research revealed something that the literature had rarely explored before.
Two storms. A population. Without a frame.
In September 2017, the US Virgin Islands were hit by two Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, just 12 days apart. It was a total disaster. The roofs are gone. Neighborhoods have been deleted. Displaced families.
Many of the people responsible for leading recovery efforts lived through the same disasters at the same time.
These were senior emergency management officials who lost family members, buried loved ones, stood on food lines, and went without power for months. In the meantime, they needed to step up as leaders in their communities and help others through the trauma they themselves were experiencing at the same time.
One participant lost his father. He buried him. And he went to work the same day. “No one really knew what I was dealing with,” Tutain said. “But I had work to do.”
The research literature has consistently ignored this dynamic. Disaster recovery studies treat survivors and emergency leaders as distinct populations with different needs, different support structures, and different psychological trajectories. But in small communities and in many organizational contexts, they are borders unclear
And when they do, something happens that our support systems weren’t designed to handle.
When the helper and the survivor are the same person
Tutein’s central finding is a new conceptual framework he calls HSVC, for short Helper-Survivor Vulnerability Convergence.
HSVC is what happens when the helper and the survivor are not two different people, in two separate roles separated by two different experiences as a victim and a first responder. They are the same person who has the same and dual experience at the same time.
One research participant summed it up in five simple words: “Your defendants are truly victims.”
Tutain describes this person as an “invisible victim” who recognizes similar patterns in all of his participants. These leaders performed the full professional disaster recovery roles required of them while repressing the experiences of their survivors. They were visible as leaders. But invisible as people who, along with everyone around them, have experienced devastating loss.
When it comes to disaster relief and recovery, ignoring the experiences of survivors is a design failure. Our entire framework for supporting disaster recovery workers is built on the understanding that a helper and a survivor are two different people – one strong and determined, ready to intervene, the other weak and in need of support.
But what happens when one person has these dual roles?
Growth during injury
Tutain’s research expands our understanding of it post-traumatic growth (PTG), a framework developed by Tedeschi and Calhoun that describes how people can emerge from disaster with greater strength and meaning.
PTG is traditionally measured retrospectively, something that occurs after the injury has subsided. Tutein’s data expands this definition.
Tutain discovered that meaning and healing occur in real time through the act of leadership. An official who had a roof over his head, whose neighbors he didn’t know, and whose family was displaced, simply said: “I am not a victim here.”
This was not an explanation to refuse. When everything outside was out of control, it was a deliberate choice to keep the agency alive. “The promotion made sense,” Tutain writes. Participants did not wait for treatment. They grew through the service, expanding PTG into a simultaneous, real-time experience.
Dynamics is also connected to the concept of experience Intelligence (XQ), the idea that life experience creates a form of knowledge and individual ability that education and education cannot repeat. Disaster recovery combined with leading support efforts creates a visceral knowledge base that no classroom can produce. But existing frameworks never fully accounted for it.
The possibility of sustainable development
Tutain’s ground-breaking research provides opportunities for all leaders and organizations within the disaster context and beyond.
Current disaster response frameworks treat embedded local officials equally with deployed external responses, as if going home after a shift means returning to rest and safety, not to the disaster zone. An important event stress management models aimed at preventing psychological distress afterwards vulnerable Cases provide for a clear boundary between the responder and the affected community. For example, after hurricanes in the US Virgin Islands, the boundaries became blurred.
Whether in the context of disaster recovery, when a leader loses a parent, experiences a crisis, or suffers a significant personal loss, they are often expected to maintain full professional performance and bear the weight of their experience.
We rarely ask our leaders if they themselves need support. We rely on them to show strength and offer it to others. Strong work performance is not evidence of emotional well-being. Some of the most capable, reliable, and resilient people in an organization can also shoulder the heaviest burdens.
Organizations can apply the insights of Tutien’s research through three practical strategies:
- Proactively identify dual staff during a crisis. When organizational disruption occurs—natural disasters, layoffs, community tragedies—some leaders are both responsible for the response and personally affected by it. Name it. Support it structurally.
- Design of support systems for bidirectional convergence. Stop making programs for survivors or leaders. Consider people who are both at the same time. EAP programs, your trainerand mental health resources should be made available to those who cannot afford to be vulnerable and provide the resources themselves.
- Educate everyone to see the invisible victim. Strong work performance is not evidence of well-being. Someone with a significant loss may be able to work full time for a long time. Proactively creating support networks and promoting psychological safety to allow someone to seek support will help change organizational culture to make invisible victims visible.
The HSVC Tutein framework is likely to open up a new stream of research and organizational support needed for the future. His research reveals new opportunities to better support bilateral response, so they are prominent in the field of disaster preparedness and are widely recognized as critical success factors in promoting greater development. leadership and organizational stability.
