Alpine Bushfires
Rob Gordon · 56 min
After four decades working with disaster survivors, psychotherapist Rob Gordon reveals that the greatest predictor of recovery is not money or infrastructure — it is the quality of your relationships.
If this story feels close to home
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Rob Gordon has spent forty years working with disaster survivors. What he has learned changes how we understand recovery. After the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, when post-traumatic stress disorder had only just been named, Rob realised that disasters create problems far wider than psychology had a language for. They rupture entire communities at once, which means the very people you need to lean on are themselves broken and struggling.
Rob identifies three core challenges that hit people after a disaster. There is trauma, which is the psychological injury that comes from experiences that exceed what you thought could happen. There is loss, which reaches deep into identity itself, losing not just objects but the pieces of yourself that were woven through them. And there is disruption. When a tree falls on your bathroom, you suddenly have a massive task that swallows your life. You stop talking to your partner, stop seeing friends, stop the small routines that held your values in place. What people do not realise is that these routines are not luxuries. They are the structure through which you stay connected to what matters.
The research is clear: the greatest predictor of recovery is not money or infrastructure. It is the quality of your relationships. Yet at the exact moment people need their community most, that community fractures. Friends disappear. Neighbours stop calling. The social fabric that holds people through hard times tears apart.
Rob describes recovery as moving through recognisable phases: survival, then years of grinding rebuilding, then an identity crisis when you finally stop and ask who you are now, then profound exhaustion. Understanding which phase you are in lets you make choices that actually serve you. He has seen people shift from stalled recovery to real progress in three days away from the wreckage. He has watched communities heal when they gathered to eat half-cooked sausages and laugh together. What holds everything together is staying connected to people and staying clear about what matters beyond the physical stuff.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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