Understanding and Responding to Crisis Sandra Rupnarain Family Connection Centre Counselling Education & Research Phone 416 741 4982 - email:[email protected].

Understanding and Responding to Crisis

Sandra RupnarainFamily Connection Centre

Counselling Education & ResearchPhone 416 741 4982 - email:[email protected]

CRISIS

Danger and Opportunity

The two Chinese characters displayed above together mean “crisis”: one symbol is for danger and the other for opportunity. Crisis can be understood the same way: both as a danger and an opportunity. Thus, crisis itself is not bad; it is what one does with it that makes a difference

How Crisis Happens

Dynamics of a Crisis Experience

Dynamics of a Crisis Experience

"Normal" demands & Expectations of Life Personal Stress Cycle Negative Feelings "Available" Cognitive -Behavioural Coping Skills Crisis of

Hopelessness & Copelessness

Negative Feelings Personal Stress Cycle "Normal"Demands & Expectations of Life

Small Group Discussion

Remember a time when you or someone close to you experienced a crisis.

How did you know you/they were in crisis? What were the feelings? How did you/they try to deal with the crisis? What helped to resolve the crisis? If you/they talked to someone

what did that person do that helped? What steps could you, take in helping a person through a crisis? What coping mechanisms would people in your culture use in a

crisis situation? Who would become involved?

Crisis and Transition

The Process of Transition and the Cycle of Feelings and Crisis

The Process of Transition

Anxiety

Can I cope?

Anxiety

Can I cope?

Happiness

At Last something’s

going to change !

Happiness

At Last something’s

going to change !

Fear

What impact will this have?How will it affect me?

Threat

This is bigger than I thought!

Guilt

Did I reallydo that

Depression

Who am I?

Gradual Acceptance

I can see myself in the future

Gradual Acceptance

I can see myself in the future

Moving Forward

This can work and be good

Moving Forward

This can work and be good

Hostility

I’ll make this work if it kills me!!

Denial

Change? What Change?

Disillusionment

I’m off!! … this isn’t for me!

Disillusionment

I’m off!! … this isn’t for me!

What Constitutes a Crisis

 Roberts (1990) describes a crisis as having three main ingredients:

A precipitating event that effects a clientThe client’s belief that the event will be stressful

or disruptingA lack of effective coping strategies – i.e. the

coping strategies that have worked in the past will not work this time.

First Crisis PhaseThe first crisis phase is usually not experienced

as such, rather, it is experienced as a rise in tension or stress level, generally associated with some external happening. The external event may, or may not be unpleasant but the person must mobilize some resources do something different than usual in order to deal with it. The system is working if the new coping strategy is adequate, and a crisis may be averted.

The Second Crisis Phase

The second crisis phase is inevitable if the strategies do not work. These is more tension, a general sense that nothing can be done about the problem and a sense that the person is getting way over their head. If all is failing the individual will begin to initiate emergency action.

The Third Crisis Phase

The third crisis phase is the “Big Push” accessing everything that they know to deal with the problem. If it works then the person will return to the altered yet pre-crisis stage. Here the crisis was not averted but is dealt with and is now past.

The Fourth Crisis Phase

If the “Big Push” does not work the person moves into the fourth crisis phase – there is still greater tension, sense of helplessness, feelings of inadequacy, disorientation, disorganization, loss of control, and confusion

Entering In

You may enter in at this point – this is the phase you are more likely to see and ask to enter in. This fourth phase is the acute crisis phase marked by the breakdown of the person’s coping mechanisms. All their emergency coping systems, all known strategies and mechanisms have broken down, tensions have peaked and disorganization has stepped in.

Common Features of the (The Fourth Phase)

This active crisis phase is generally self-limiting, changing in some way within one to five weeks. People simply cannot sustain a crisis longer that this

Common Features of the (The Fourth Phase)

Second the nature of that change will depend on what is done during the final phase rather than what has happened on the past.

Common Features of the (The Fourth Phase)

Finally people in active crisis tend to experience an increased desire to be helped by others, and to be more willing to accept that help than in other stages of crisis.

Equally if in their help seeking they are not responded to appropriately it can develop into a “situation”

Summary of the Fourth Phase

All these characteristics of acute crisis point towards the importance of moving quickly, respectfully and skillfully in a crisis intervention manner. There is a relatively short time during which:– The crisis will continue to be acute.– Present action will have the greatest effect.– The client will be most open to being helped.

Empathy   Empathy is an active process where you

listen for the feelings of another in order to understand their condition or state of mind.

It is the art of listening and carefully paying attention to the individual and their concerns.

 It is to feel what it is like to be them and put that experience into words.

Empathy

 Empathy gives permission for people to feel safe to share their feelings openly.

To be able to successfully empathize depends on your willingness to walk with another, put aside your own perspective and take on their perspective

Empathy

 To empathize is to truly be there for someone else.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy attempts to console or reassure. Sympathy takes some power away from the speaker.

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The Purpose of Empathy

The purpose of empathy is to help people get more in touch with their feelings, thoughts and personal history.

Providing empathetic listening allows people to: re-claim their voice; feel respected; discover meaning as it unfolds for them; let them set the pace and flow of the

conversation

The Purpose of Empathy

Allows people to choose their comfort level, what they want to talk about;

Allows them to talk out feelings and thoughts they have suppressed for a long time;

Allows them to talk out feelings and thoughts without fear of being judged (“you should get over it and move on”);

Helps them regain a sense of that they are in charge of their lives, and that they deserve to be heard;

Tools & Skills to Demonstrate Empathy

Responding with the words: “You feel….”; “You

sound…”.

Responding with non-directive questions, i.e. “How do you feel?”, “How does this make you feel?”, “What can you do?”, “What has worked for you in the past?”

Clarifying questions, i.e. “Do I hear you saying…?”, “I am not sure if I understood…”;

Paraphrasing questions, i.e. In your words you….”, “As you see it…”;

Tools & Skills to Demonstrate Empathy

AVOID the following: Asking “WHY”, Saying: “You should”, Using closed questions (“Did you…, have

you…”) as they only allow for a YES or NO response.

Paying undivided attention to the individual listening to his/her feelings as it may be the first time they are being listened to.

Crossing Cultures

Encountering Cultural Difference

Stages of Adaptation From "The Art of Crossing Cultures" - C. Storti. Intercultural Press, 1990

We expect others to be like us, but they aren't

Thus, a cultural incident occurs

Causing a reaction (Fear, Anger, etc.)

And we withdraw We become aware of our reaction

We reflect on its cause

And our reaction subsides

We observe the situation

Which results in developing culturally appropriate

expectations

We are determined by our formative experiences

I thought the whole world was just like me, until we moved away.. Then I learned

I was different.

Psychosocial Development

Our progress through each stage of development is in part determined by our success, or lack of success, in all the previous stages.

Eric Erikson and the epigenetic principle.

We Evolve Through Social Interaction

Socialization imprints on personality and our personality impacts on others. Their reaction to our personality then determines our socialization… and so on.

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Walk A Mile in Their Shoes

Formative experiences.

teach us how to interact with the world.

Evaluation & Closure