In Post-Riot L. A., Anxiety Exacts a Toll on Daily Life

Angry, frightened, anxious, uncertain--even deeply depressed--much of Los Angeles is discovering the road back to everyday life is fraught with emotional and psychological potholes, even for those far removed from the riots and fires.

A commuter from Hollywood to East Los Angeles keeps a watchful eye for snipers on freeway overpasses. A San Fernando Valley woman kidnaped five years ago is reminded of her painful ordeal. Downtown office workers worry over lunch that the mayhem may return.

A black man complains of being tailed by police while stopping at a restaurant in a mostly white neighborhood. An immigrant from El Salvador switches from her regular bus to the Blue Line trolley because somehow it makes her feel safer. Students at Cal State Los Angeles seek reassurance from a psychology professor that everything will be all right.

“People are going through a kaleidoscope of emotions,” said therapist Sandra Cox, whose Mid-City practice draws from South Los Angeles and other inner-city communities. “There is so much hopelessness and helplessness out there. The city is in need of psychological first aid.”

Nearly two weeks after the violence began, some residents from South Los Angeles to Sylmar are still complaining of headaches, loss of appetite, stomach pain, sleeplessness, less interest in sex, nightmares and other symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorders, according to therapists, pastors and others involved in counseling.

Some married couples report quarreling more. Motorists confess to having shorter tempers. Employees confide to co-workers that they are finding it difficult to concentrate on their work.

Underlying much of the unease is a nagging sense of insecurity that things may get worse before they get better, that the city may not be up to the task of rebuilding itself physically and emotionally, that the collective psyche of Los Angeles may have been shattered.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said a trembling Margaret Thomas, one of hundreds who have turned for help to disaster relief centers, where mental health counselors have been on hand. “It’s frightening to think about the future.”

The cumulative uneasiness, while seemingly overwhelming for some, is predictable--even normal--in light of the tremendous jolt the city suffered following the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, psychologists say.

Unlike natural disasters, such as an earthquake or flood, the verdicts and the violent rampage that ensued cannot be dismissed or rationalized as “acts of God” that struck with no apparent reason.

Instead, the psychologists said, the recent events in Los Angeles generated “human-induced trauma” that has shaken many people’s confidence in other people, their governing institutions and society as a whole.

For some, the not guilty verdicts were enough to bring their world crumbling down; for others, it was the anarchy that followed in South Los Angeles, Koreatown, Hollywood, Compton, Long Beach and elsewhere.

“Trust in other human beings is such a basic part of our sense of safety in our lives,” said Westwood psychologist Debra Borys, who specializes in trauma and disasters. “In a natural disaster, no human fault is identifiable and people don’t feel betrayed by other people. . . . Here, there has been a sense of betrayal, a sense of being personally targeted for an unjust reason. That sense of safety, the things we can rely on in our dealings with other human beings in daily life, is shattered.”

The betrayal has manifested itself in many painful ways.

A black Ladera Heights woman was shopping at an upscale department store in Beverly Hills, where she is a regular customer. Several angry white customers quickly surrounded the woman when a security detector mistakenly sounded as she tried to leave the store, said Cox, a founding member of the Southern California Assn. of Black Psychologists, which has set up a volunteer counseling service for people affected by the riots.

“One of the customers said, ‘You may be able to do that in your neighborhood, but you can’t do it over here in our neighborhood,’ ” Cox quoted the shopper, who declined to be interviewed. “She was just devastated.”

In many black and minority neighborhoods, psychologists said, residents are struggling with feelings of anger and depression as they try to come to terms with the verdicts in the King case while trying to explain the devastation in their own communities.

“I feel upset because of the injustice that was done to Rodney King,” said Joseph Jacobs, 68, whose Western Avenue lawn mower service store was looted and burned. “But I keep thinking: Is the injustice that I suffered at the hands of brothers worth (it)?

“It’s confusing to me.”

Gail Wyatt, a UCLA professor of medical psychology, said that for many, it has boiled down to an issue of racism.

“Racism is a terrorizing experience,” said Wyatt, who is black. “I don’t think most people understand what racism is like and how it is played out in the lives of people of color on a daily basis.

“Ethnic minorities feel they are being stared at more, being treated differently in restaurants, being followed home by police as if they are suspicious. It is a kind of paranoia that black people have always felt, but other people may be hearing for the first time.”

Marvel Rolfe, who lives in a mostly black neighborhood in the Crenshaw area, said the crisis has also turned black against black, creating a whole new set of conflicting emotions. Some of Rolfe’s neighbors criticized her for helping a longtime Japanese-American business owner hastily move groceries and liquor out of his neighborhood market during the height of the looting.

“The thing that really made me angry was having to deal with another black . . . telling me about my roots and how I should behave,” said Rolfe, 52, who also removed a burning torch tossed into a car outside the store.

Previously mundane routines such as driving the car or going out to eat have taken on new significance because of widely publicized images of motorists being dragged from their cars and businesses being torched. Many people complain of experiencing flashbacks of the incidents, both in dreams and during the course of everyday tasks, even if they only viewed them on television.

For the first time, Burbank office manager Judy Howard contemplated not visiting her mother’s grave on Mother’s Day because she was hesitant to drive on surface streets in Inglewood. She ultimately decided to go.

Images of the riot still haunt Cayce Lynn, 29. Listening to jazz at a Pasadena bar, Lynn said, “I suddenly thought of somebody blowing out the window. I look around me a little bit more. I’m looking at people differently, wondering what they are thinking.”

In San Marino, an affluent community unscathed by the violence, a man who had been hunting for a house to buy told one seller last week that he was now interested only in renting because he had decided to leave Los Angeles when his daughter finishes high school.

“Nobody seems to know what to do, so everybody kind of hunkers down in their own home, whatever home means to them, and just sort of becomes paralyzed in terms of the larger issue,” said Pasadena psychotherapist Patrick Thyne. “The larger issue is how do we thrive as a community.”

The psychological toll has been even greater among people already trying to cope with emotional problems and who now find themselves confronted with a new source of anxiety, psychologists said.

A Hollywood man--in therapy to deal with sexual identity questions--told his counselor he had talked on the telephone with his dead father about the fires and looting he witnessed from his apartment window. Then the man broke down and wept.

A client at a county mental health clinic on Hollywood Boulevard, who had recently overcome her fear of public transportation, suddenly refused to board the bus. At the same clinic last week, a group counseling session that normally breaks up at 3:30 p.m. dragged on an extra 1 1/2 hours because clients did not want to leave.

“They wanted to spend a few extra hours feeling safe,” explained counselor Isaac Urquidi.

One psychologist reported her clients of mixed race are experiencing renewed questions of identity and split loyalties, while several marriage counselors said some troubled couples have been so distracted by events that they have been unable to concentrate on their therapy.

“Normally, when you are having trouble, the nice thing to know is the world is pretty much intact,” said Beverly Hills psychologist Stuart Fischoff. “Now everything is turned upside down.”

As difficult as the past two weeks have been, psychologists say there are ways to recover. For some, the solution has been volunteer work--sweeping the streets, helping in food pantries, assisting voter registration drives and organizing politically.

Churches in and out of the devastated areas have been inundated with offers of help and phones at several City Hall offices have been ringing continually with offers of assistance.

“As we work together, we can make some sense out of all of the confusion, and help them understand that they don’t have to give up hope,” said Jim Nelson, director of pastoral services at the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, where a food drive was held. “We can turn this situation around--and our city.”

Some psychologists warned, however, that it could be months before many people feel whole again.

“Some people just hurried back to work and tried to resume their lives,” Wyatt said. “But the issue is not resolved. There is still a lot of suspicion and doubt.”

Thyne said the city’s recovery is analogous to that of a person who suffered a serious breakdown. “When a person comes for help to a therapist,” he said, “they almost always underestimate two things: the seriousness of their problem and the length of time it will take to get well.”

In the end, some may decide they need professional help. But just talking it out with friends and relatives--even the person behind you in the grocery line--may be therapy enough, Cox said.

“That will help, that will work as a catharsis,” Cox said. “Some of the best mental health practitioners are our family, friends and neighbors. We all have a part to play in this in putting the emotional state of the community back to center.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Chavez contributed to this story.