When someone has been through a traumatic experience, such as a major earthquake, I would encourage them to face their fears by connecting with nature. This can include taking a walk on the beach and feeling the sand through their feet, or hiking in the mountains listening to nature’s noises such as the wind blowing and the birds chirping. I would also recommend listening to the sound of ocean waves and waterfalls to not only face the fear with a natural disaster such as an earthquake, but also to recognize the beautiful aspects of nature. Overtime, I think this would help with transitioning the person’s perspective from one of fear to one of relaxation. According to Southwick and Charney (2018), it is possible for the brain to relearn and re-associate with something. For example, what once used to lead to a fearful and terrifying feeling can over time be associated with a positive and relaxing feeling, if the person is willing to actively face their fear. Another important method to face one’s fear is to do so with other individuals whom the person has an established and trusting relationship with, such as loved ones. For example, the victim can experience nature on the beach or in the mountains with their loved ones. And yet another method is to use the help of a professional, such as a psychiatrist, to walk the person through their fear and analyze this feeling and the experience up close. In the case of an earthquake, this could mean actively analyzing the victim’s thoughts and feelings with respect to the trauma they have experienced in the earthquake.

My cup of chai. (2014, November 8). Face your fears. Retrieved April 17, 2021, from

https://knachiket.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/face-your-fears/

I fully believe in the power of exposure therapy as long as it's performed in a controlled manner and administered by a trained professional. A friend of mine lost his legs in Afghanistan in the early days of the war. He suffered nightmares, intense PTSD, and struggled through his life for a significant amount of time. He tried psychotherapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and other holistic treatments. Until he was invited into a study on controlled exposure therapy, toning worked. He wouldn't tell anybody what happened. But through controlled exposure therapy he slowly began to face his fear and process the event that not only took his legs but killed all of his friends riding in the tank. He spoke of experiences and talked about his trauma for the first time. As mentioned in a paper on the benefits of exposure therapy, Zoellner, et al, says "Some clinicians are afraid to ever ask the question or hear the answer to, “What actually happened?” For individuals with PTSD, exposure therapy provides a means to directly and therapeutically approach this question," (Zoellner et al., 2011). There are many other options and having somebody relive their trauma or exposing them to situations that trigger memories of their trauma is a tricky thing. But I've seen it work. And would recommend it to those who have survived a disaster.

Zoellner, L. A., Feeny, N. C., Bittinger, J. N., Bedard-Gilligan, M. A., Slagle, D. M., Post, L. M., & Chen, J. A. (2011). Teaching trauma-focused exposure therapy for PTSD: Critical clinical lessons for novice exposure therapists. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 3(3), 300–308. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024642

This is more of an opinion answer than one I can find a source to back me up. I tend to be a fearful person who once accomplishes the thing I am afraid of, looks back and says that wasn't so bad. I have never been in a natural or man-made disaster for which I am thankful. I have been adjacent to disaster though as my brother was in Houston when it flooded, family was in Mississippi after Katrina, and have had near misses with tornados and hurricanes. Overcoming fear isn't always for me about facing that fear head on but more about finding a different path to accomplish that fear. Coming at the thing I fear from an angle tends to lead to more success than just facing it head on. I was afraid of going to college because of fear of failure, but while in the Navy I did a school to specialize in my field and I was top of my class. Every time I was afraid of starting college, I reminded myself of that small win and it made taking every next step just slightly easier. For those in a disaster, I would suggest finding those easy wins that aren't necessarily the big fear but adjacent to it and work up to facing the biggest fear. For most in disaster, it's the losses that hit the hardest, so when faced with the fear of overcoming those losses, start with the smallest loss and face it.