How To Survive a Shark Attack
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David was in the ocean in Hawaii when the unthinkable happened—a shark attacked him and bit off his leg. "I don't think you're gonna make it," a medic told the 25-year-old on the helicopter ride to the hospital. But David did make it, and soon he learned that surviving the shark wasn't the hardest part—it was what came after. On this episode of How To!, we bring in Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist and author of The Body Keeps the Score, to help David understand and deal with the lasting psychological trauma of the attack. For anyone suffering from severe trauma, Bessel says, it's okay to grieve the person you were before. Accepting the loss of the "old you" will allow you to better embrace who you are now, both in your mind and body.
Do you need help overcoming life's many challenges? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.
Transcript
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| 0:30.5 | I just kind of just got out of the hospital and my hands in this like crazy cast, my legs in |
| 0:36.0 | like a crazy cast and there's this guy on the elevator, we'll call him |
| 0:40.9 | Chad, because he was kind of a bro. And Chad has like a cast on his risk. And so his friend asked |
| 0:48.2 | him, oh, how did you get that? And he goes, oh, I was attacked by a shark. And I was like, oh, no way, |
| 0:53.3 | me too. And then both |
| 0:54.4 | them just, like, looked terrified and, like, realized I wasn't kidding. Welcome to how to. I'm |
| 1:03.4 | Charles Stewart. If you're anything like me, this is the time of year when you go to the beach |
| 1:08.6 | and you surf and you swim and you hang out in the |
| 1:10.9 | water. And my wife, while we're in the ocean, she loves to mention to me how much she likes |
| 1:16.8 | the movie Jaws, which I point out to her every single time is a totally messed up thing to say |
| 1:21.7 | while we're in the ocean. But at the same time, it's not like I really need to be worried |
| 1:27.3 | about a shark attack, right? |
| 1:29.1 | I mean, how likely is it that I will be attacked by a shark? |
| 1:34.2 | Well, meet this week's listener, David. |
| 1:37.6 | I went on a family vacation to Hawaii, and my dad and I, you know, about 9 a.m. in the morning went stand-up paddleboarding |
| 1:45.7 | and something hit the back on my board and there's usually a lot of, you know, dolphins and |
| 1:50.8 | whales and things like that. And so I thought maybe a whale had breached or something. But my dad, |
| 1:55.6 | who was a couple yards behind me, yelled shark and saw that there was a shark and so I scrambled |
... |
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