Dealing With a Crisis
(Reducing Overwhelm)
“A crisis strips us of our pretences, our response to a crisis can show us who we really are”
A personal crisis is, by definition, an emotionally stressful event or traumatic change in someone’s life. A personal crisis is an event or situation that, for most of us, is very much out of the ordinary and seems to demand immediate or extreme action. Unless it is our job to handle crises, most of us remain unprepared for such events until they are upon us and so we will tend to find ourselves the victim of events, or acting without time to think things through, or dealing directly with our own or other’s strong emotions with little chance to reason things through. Even crises that develop over time seem to catch us unprepared, suffering from what may seem like a form of self-denial or even mass avoidance.
This chapter addresses some of the things that can be done to reduce the impact of a personal crisis and start the process of recovery from it. It is important to make one point clear here, the approaches outlined here are not those used for external crisis management nor, in a general sense, for responding to major crises impacting large populations.
In concept the things to be done in and following a crisis are simple and, at least to those that are generally able keep a level head in crisis situations, may seem obvious. Nevertheless, actually dealing with or living through a crisis can be a very different experience to how we imagine it when we are at our most calm and rational.
Of course, crises also come in lots of varieties and intensities and impact people in different ways. For some a financial or health challenge will become a crisis, for some it will be a physical emergency that challenges their calm, or for many an emotional event such as an intense argument or a relationship breakdown will be or develop into a crisis.
The cause of the crisis may be a single quick event, such as an accident or a crime, or an on-going situation such as harassment, an unusual economic situation, or a natural disaster.
Case Story – Malcolm Threatened
Malcolm reached his crisis over a period of 18 months. It was building around him and gathering in strength throughout that time, but it finally became unavoidable when two men that he had never seen before confronted him on his way home and threatened to kill him if he did not pay his debt.
Malcolm had entered into a business relationship with a pair of local workmen where Malcolm would find garden makeover work and he and the workmen would complete it. At first this had gone well but it was not long before the workmen started to request a bigger and bigger share of the income from the jobs they were doing together, and the quality and reliability of their work dropped. It also became apparent that the workmen seemed to have a sideline of drug dealing.
Requests turned to demands and demands turned to threats. In the months leading to the death threats Malcolm’s car was destroyed by fire, his wife and family threatened, and property at his house damaged or stolen.
The death threats were the last straw and, even though Malcolm was coping as best he could, he had reached an emotional crisis point; he was deeply scared and desperate for a way out of a situation that seemed to have no solution. He was no longer sleeping and was extremely anxious, particularly about noises outside the house.
With support, Malcolm was able to review the security of himself and his family and build a support network of police, family, friends, doctor, and neighbours. Emotional support gave him coping strategies to reverse the anxiety and reduce the emotional swings, and to work on a set of plans for moving forward from the current situation. Within a relatively short period Malcolm was no longer the emotional victim of his crisis, he was doing what he could to navigate a course to recover his normal life, he was actively working with his wife to better support one another, and he was looking after himself; sleeping longer, getting exercise, and establishing a routine that supported him to deal with issues calmly and confidently.
Checklist.
When I support people following or even during a personal crisis I have a simple mental checklist that I use to allow a step-by-step approach to be applied. This checklist reflects the priorities to be considered and the order in which they will tend to need be considered. By considering each one in turn it is normally possible to make progress and to allow the victim of a crisis to re-establish their ability to lead a more normal life.
The simplest checklist is as follows:
1. Physical security
2. Support and communications
3. Action strategies
4. Relationship issues
5. Emotional stress review
6. Emotional coping strategies
7. Strategies to support change
In realistic situations, steps 5 and 6 may need to be moved up the list if the emotion is overwhelming or too distracting to allow the other steps to be attempted first. In extreme cases there may be a need for professional intervention to make a medical or psychological assessment and to determine the correct treatment of emotional issues. Such cases are beyond the scope of this writing. If the person suffering is unresponsive to changes in the situation, is making decisions or acting in ways that seem disconnected with the situation, or if the person is unable to describe their own mental state then professional help should be sought.
And, of course, in all cases the full cycle of steps may need to be gone through on a regular basis depending on the situation. The cycle of reviewing each of these points may be anything from once a day to once every few weeks.
Step 1. Physical Security
Abraham Maslow is famous for attempting to identify and define a hierarchy of needs that must be met for human beings to be able to appreciate and enjoy higher levels of motivation and fulfilment. Maslow proposed that only if the lower levels of need are met can an individual successfully engage in the higher levels of activity.
Maslow’s conclusions have been challenged in various ways since he first published but I think the basic ideas are valuable when looking at how people respond to stress and how to improve their ability to work through their challenges.
At the lowest level Maslow included bodily needs such as breathing, food, water, and sleep. At the next level Maslow identified security of body, of the family, and of property.
It is these needs that are covered by attention to physical security. The first priority is to make sure that physical security is fully considered. There are a number of questions to be considered, such as:
• Has the crisis passed or are there on-going issues?
• Can anything be done to repair physical damage and help prevent any further damage?
• Can improvements be made to the physical situation?
• Is it important to change physical location or to move people or belongings?
• Are there longer-term changes to be made?
• Are there resources needed to make required changes or are there shortfalls?
• Is medical attention of any kind required?
Step 2. Support and Communications
The level and nature of support that is available to us when we are in need can have a very great impact on how we are impacted by crises. Identification of actual and potential sources of support can be vital, and the sooner this step is considered the better.
• Is there official support from a suitable authority (emergency services, qualified practitioners, legal and political figures, educational and other experts)?
• Are communications in place and readily available?
• Is there family and/or close friends or associates available?
• What is the nature of communications available for these; are they close by, are they likely to be useful as genuine sources of physical or emotional support?
• What other types of support might be useful and how can they be contacted?
Step 3. Action Strategies
Once the basics have been dealt with it is possible to move on to looking to the future. At first this will be a brief review of what can be done to change the situation.
The significance of this stage is twofold:
• To build a realistic knowledge of the situation, likely outcomes, and possible goals for action.• To empower the individual.
By building a realistic knowledge of the situation the chances of identifying action plans that have a chance of working are improved. The more knowledge that can be built up the better as knowledge, as opposed to guesswork and supposition, provides the foundation for an ability to influence and perhaps even to control the situation.
Also, gaining realistic knowledge can have a profound effect on how we respond to situations as knowledge reduces the tendency of the mind to get into speculation. Even knowing the worst can be better than guessing the worst, as it allows us to have an appropriate emotional response to the situation. It is well recognised that one of the most challenging situations to live with is one where we simply don’t know what is going on.
In terms of empowerment, one of the aspects of any crisis is that people become the victims of the crisis. This is something that has happened to them that, presumably, has not been of their choosing. Initially they are literally victims because they have reduced power to influence events. One prime significance of this ‘victim’ state is that it can become one that continues after the original cause or event has reduced or even passed. The ‘victim’ continues to feel and behave as if they have reduced personal power, they can become withdrawn in one form or another and so even less able to deal with the challenges that they face. One of the quickest ways to deal with this is to identify realistic actions that can be taken, which can counteract the victim state of mind and bring considerable relief, particularly if this becomes part of a planned goal to change the overall situation and return the person(s) involved to a full and normal participation in life.
Case Story – John's Enemy
John was a normally confident young man. He worked in a shop and generally got on well with other staff and customers. His problem started when he had an argument with another young man who worked in a neighbouring shop. John had heard that the other man was mistreating his girlfriend, who also happened to be a friend of John’s. John went to talk with the other man and quickly found himself in a heated argument that ended up with him being assaulted.
Some months later and John was getting more and more anxious because although the original incident had passed, John had been receiving anonymous threatening phone calls and the other young man was acting in a very provocative way whenever they passed in the street, particularly if the other man was with his friends. John was becoming scared that the situation would escalate again and he may be attacked by the man backed up by his friends. He was also scared that he might lose his job because of the hostility.
What became important for John to overcome his anxiety was for him to face his fears and to redirect his focus of attention to his job and what he wanted to achieve working where he was. By realistically working out what he was afraid of, what he could do to minimise the threat, and how to handle different situations if they did arise, John was able to reduce his frustration with the situation. By redirecting his attention to his work, John was able to rebuild his self confidence and focus on building his life around something that was important to him.
But how do you go about building action strategies?
There are many ways and different approaches that are appropriate depending on the situation and the people involved. This might be a typical cycle:
1. Review the current situation and list the things that are unwanted or ‘wrong’.
2. Work with the list, alongside the outcome from the security step, define what needs to be changed or what an objective for change might be.
3. Prioritise each item so that the list can be broadly broken down into more significant and less significant items.
4. For each item begin to identify possible direct actions that can be taken or support that can be sought (see below for more on this one).
5. For each item choose an initial action to take and prioritise these actions
6. For each action identify what sort of support may be required, the timescale for the action, what other actions may be required to follow it through, and how the actions relate together.
To begin with, there may well be some items that seem to have no solution, or the action required to make the change may be assessed as impossible or beyond current capability. The aim with these items will be to continue to work on them to identify what can and what cannot be done, either to work on them over a period of time, or to make the on-going situation survivable for the time-being, or to give time to explore the unknowns of the situation or the possible actions.
Obviously, not all problems will have a ready solution, but working to reduce the number of problems and to identify possible solutions into the future will progressively reduce the overwhelming impact of the situation.
Even when there are some obvious actions that can be taken, appropriate and realistic actions may be hard to identify at first. In these cases the best action may be to seek more information or to seek advice or input from others. Seeking support or advice is an action in itself, and can be the preferred way to move forward.
All action steps can be given the popular SMART test. This helps to manage the actions and make the overall objectives more likely to be achieved. There are various versions of the SMART test, but this one does the job To pass the SMART test each action should ideally be:
Specific The action should be well-defined
Measurable The action and the result should be measurable
Agreed Everyone that is party to the action should be agreed
Realistic The action should be realistically achievable
Time-based The action should as a minimum have a start and end point
It helps in crisis situations and in the recovery period following them to repeat this step of building an action strategy on a regular basis, and to have input from other people. Our tendency can be to try to do this in our head, with the result that we either experience a form of hopelessness and collapse (a victim state) or we drive ourselves toward exhaustion (a stress state). By making the process explicit, external, and if possible involving other people in the process, we regulate these two responses and start a cycle of coping rather than falling into a cycle of reduced effectiveness and discomfort.
Step 4. Relationship issues
A crisis or serious challenge will often put severe strain on relationships. The sense of overwhelm and emotional trauma that is felt by one or more people can lead to deterioration of close relationships at the very time when support from those relationship is most needed.
Everybody tends to respond to a crisis in a different way, and following a different timescale. It can become more difficult to offer appropriate support and understanding to others when we are in need of support ourselves. As a result. stresses can tend to build in close relationships if attention is not given to maintaining the relationships.
Relationship challenges are considered more fully in the chapter “Guarding Your Relationship”, but here are some basic pointers that can be considered at this stage:
It can be helpful to spend time and sit down together to work out some ground-rules for how to communicate during the period of the crisis. Communication agreements will be both more important and more challenging if the relationship itself is part of the problem!
Consider these elements:
No-blame agreement. Agree to not get into blaming each other or pick on one family member.
Talking stick. When you do talk, take it in turns and allow one person to have their say fully for an agreed amount of time. This can be done with the help of a token (the talking stick) where the one that holds the token is speaking and no-one else speaks out of turn; in other words do not interrupt each other, do not argue, do not hog the talking time.
Time out. Allow for anyone to call time out for a 5-minute break.
Time in. If the situation allows it, decide to talk about the issue only at certain times and only for a set time. This one helps to reduce mutual worry and reduces the sense of overwhelm that some can suffer when the shared focus is always on one issue.
Positive suggestions. It can be empowering to have a specific time given to considering only positive suggestions. Everyone attempts to contribute something; an idea, an observation, some news, that is positive. In a crisis it is easy to focus on the negative, and having some shared time set aside to develop some positive attitudes helps to rebalance the shared experience and boost mutual support.
Language. Some people tend to use very emotive language when they are stressed or when they want to make a point particularly strongly. Having a no-swearing, no-shouting, no-glaring agreement can help to keep intimidation to a minimum.
Step 5. Emotional stress review
An emotional or stress review is a little like a physical review, it aims to identify what emotions may be running and what, if anything, needs to be done about that. At its simplest an emotional review comprises a simple question: “How do you feel?”
The review should, right from the start, look at the needs of everyone involved. This is particularly important in a family situation where the potential impact on children may not immediately be obvious.
There are bound to be emotional responses to a crisis affecting those involved both during and after the crisis. Many of these can be regarded as totally natural and appropriate; there will be a variety of feelings as the emotional response develops and there will be certain associated thoughts. Potential problems occur when the feelings are disproportionate, when the feelings are incapacitating, or when the person is being affected by the feelings to such an extent that they are making rash decisions, becoming hopeless and possibly depressed or numbed out, or spiralling into a state of extreme emotional discomfort.
As has been noted above, in extreme cases there may be a need for professional intervention to make a medical or psychological assessment and to determine the correct treatment. These particular cases are beyond the scope of this writing and an emotional review would not be appropriate. In general, look for these symptoms: If the person suffering the strong emotional state is unresponsive to changes in the situation, is making decisions or acting in ways that seem disconnected with the situation, or if the person is unable to describe their own mental state. In these cases, professional help should be sought.
There are however a number of things that can usefully be considered as part of the process of responding to a crisis when mental health issues are not involved. In all cases any action or ‘support’ needs to be understood by those receiving it and agreed to in advance. It is not useful, and may indeed be harmful, to impose any form of emotional support or advice on another human being without their informed consent and willingness to engage. Ultimately, the person experiencing the emotion is the only one who is adequately informed to make meaningful choices about what support they want or find useful.
The simplest and often most effective support that can be offered as part of the emotional review is for a trusted support person to simply invite the person involved to say what they feel comfortable saying about their emotional responses to the situation and for the supporter to simply listen without offering feedback or comment. This is a form of passive listening. This form of support can come from a close relative or friend but can also be very effective in the short term coming from a trusted stranger.
This approach can be expanded for a whole group of people, where each person is given a chance to say what they want to say without feedback from the rest of the group other than to indicate that the speaker has been heard.
More advanced and alternative options are discussed below (under coping strategies) and in the more detailed sections on dealing with emotion and calming intensive states of mind.
Step 6. Emotional Coping strategies
We all have emotional coping strategies. Indeed, much of psychological theory is founded on identification of these everyday coping strategies. We learn how to ‘behave’ with family and friends, we learn how to ‘behave’ in social situations, we learn how to ‘behave’ at all the places that we spend our normal time. Our learned behaviour patterns (our own particular coping strategies) are one way that we define ourselves as individuals. These emotional coping strategies are basically our preferred ‘way of being’ in different situations.
The problem with a crisis situation is that our normal coping strategies may be inappropriate or overwhelmed. We are faced with challenges that take us outside our normal behaviour and into a less familiar situation. Our standard coping strategies cease to cope well with the crisis situation.
One, or probably both, of two things will tend to happen. We will resort to trying to use our most basic coping strategy even harder (we become more set in our ways and more focussed on dealing with the situation in one particular way) or we will enter a period of confusion where we almost literally believe that we do not know what to do.
People who play the strategy harder can be very difficult to support. Their actions can appear strange or even at times ludicrous to others but they are also very hard to communicate with. While trying hard to cope with the situation the only way that they know, they enter into a state of mind that is so focussed that they cannot readily listen to alternative points of view. In effect they go into a form of mental denial whilst believing that they are behaving totally sensibly.
Someone who’s standard coping strategy has to some degree collapsed can actually be more straightforward to support even though they may be showing the more obvious signs of distress, as they have reached a point of recognition of their own limitations and are more likely to be prepared to try different options.
In either case though, the important next step in dealing with or recovering from a crisis situation is to identify a range of ways of stabilising the emotional situation and coping with that which needs to be coped with in the short-term. This is very much like the action strategies but here the focus is on finding ways of coping with stress, anger, panic, and so on that have been identified in the emotional review stage.
There are a number of simple strategies that can be used to help deal with stress-related emotions and behaviours and it is very likely that a combination of these, if used appropriately will lead to an improved overall ability to cope with the crisis situation. These are some of the strategies that may be considered:
1. Arrange an emergency procedure: This could include carrying a personal alarm, becoming familiar with existing fire alarm drill, arranging a special emergency procedure with neighbours, etc.
2. Breathe: Simple breathing exercises such as taking 3 slow but deep breaths just before or after an activity can calm an anxious state of mind.
3. Keep a journal of thoughts: This keeps track of events and gives a way of recording concerns but perhaps most importantly it can be used as a simple means of expressing and externalising anxious or stress-related fears and thoughts. This can go some of the way to relieving such thoughts and potentially exploring alternatives.
4. Keep a journal of decisions and actions: To record directly what has happened and the results of different actions. This can build confidence over time and help to define what works and what does not.
5. Build a routine: A routine provides structure and consistency over time. Make sure the routine supports healthy eating, sleeping, and exercise.
6. Break the routine: It can also be useful to have particular events to look forward to and times when the regular routine is changed.
7. Arrange a regular time to review the situation with others: Regular reviews of the on-going situation give the opportunity to monitor progress, to have everyone that is part of the crisis able to offer suggestions, be heard, and be part of the building of solutions.
8. Arrange regular support/sharing: Regular agreed support can give opportunities to share, and thus release, what is going on at an motional level and build confidence.
9. Consciously communicate with those around: Communication is very important to counteract beliefs of isolation and the various types of victim-mentality that can come with that.
Step 7. Strategies to support change
All the previous steps are aimed at establishing what has been (or continues to be) impacted by the crisis and what can be done to stabilise the situation. The next step is to look further forward in time and plan steps that can be tried to actively improve the situation.
The actual steps that may be appropriate in a particular crisis are obviously dependent on the details of the crisis and those involved. There are however some broad considerations that can be applied to begin to build some strategies that will support change:
Recognise wants. There is normally little point creating change if that change is not wanted or is likely to be resisted. It is often useful to spend some time exploring what is actually wanted, what changes would be most valuable, and what ambition or dream could provide a motivation for change.
Be realistic. Unrealistic wants or unrealistic attempts to achieve change may well create more problems than they solve. However, this is an area to be very careful because what seems unrealistic to one person may be straightforward to another. It is important to check things through before committing too much time or resource, but don’t automatically assume that what seems difficult at the moment is impossible.
Seek assistance. There may be many sources of assistance to achieve a change. Some people are habitually resistant to seeking assistance, and this may well be a time to challenge that habitual pattern and explore what is available.
Be prepared. The chances are that no matter how strong a want, no matter how well-planned, and no matter how well supported, creating change will run into obstacles and challenges. Being prepared to change the aim of change or adopt a change of approach will help build resilience and determination.
Take action. There will always be reasons to hold back, to wait, or to avoid taking action. The other chapters in this book address some of those. Basically, if you are not prepared to take action or your fears are too strong or there is some habitual pattern, such as procrastination, that holds you back then this needs to be dealt with first.