I was shaken up when I watched the footage of kids fleeing Deer Creek Middle School near Columbine Tuesday, after an adult opened fire. God. It was just like watching the kids at Columbine again.

Obviously, I'm not the only one to feel that way, and there are people with much bigger problems than me. So I want to share two really good pieces just published about the awful shooting this week.

1. Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis has some great advice for teachers who face a crisis like this, in Dealing with the latest Littleton shooting:

"Teachers are anxious. They're not sure what to expect. Even though they're emotions right now may be all right, all of a sudden they see their students for the first time, it can cause some strong emotions," Frank DeAngelis said. . . .

DeAngelis said one lesson he carries with him is to remember to account for the person you see in the mirror."If you can't help yourself, you can't help others," DeAngelis said, noting he got an e-mail Thursday from a teacher who'd been at Columbine in 1999 and was feeling anxiety over the Deer Creek shooting. "She said, 'God, I thought I was the only one until you talked to me and said you were feeling the same thing.' And so I think that's so important."

DeAngelis said he could tell the emotions getting to him this week, as he reached out to help fellow Jefferson County Schools staffers, but also had to re-live his own flash points.

"There's times I hear a balloon pop...and this is 11 years out...there's times I hear a balloon pop, I'll dive on the ground because of the experience that I had that day when I walked out of my office and the gunman was firing," DeAngelis said. "Unfortunately I can't take away the hurt that you're feeling right now. But the one thing that I can guarantee you is that you're not in this alone and I will walk every step of this journey with you."

--

2. Emily Friedman did a wonderfully empathetic piece for ABCNews.com, about retraumatization, and coping with PTSD. I know she's a smart reporter, because she interviewed me for the piece. (My quotes appear on the third web page.)

Here are some telling quotes from Kent Friesen, a teacher who spent hours barricaded inside Columbine the day of the attack:

"Everyone has different triggers," Friesen, 59, said . . ."The footage of the kids running from the school, that didn't hurt me as much as the helicopters," he said. "And cops, those are just my triggers."

Psychotherapy and the support of his wife, he said, have helped him battle his post-traumatic stress disorder, and he credits them both with saving his life. Friesen said he knows others don't deal with flashbacks as well as he does.

"I just know that I won't sleep well for the next couple of days," he said. "I'll have flashbacks of what I saw, and those kids. You think about the kids who suffered."