10 Ways to Help You Survive a Personal Crisis

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Crises happen when we least expect them. They take us off guard and send us spinning. Perhaps you recently found yourself in one of these scenarios:

You discover your husband has been having an affair.

A valued relationship has recently ended.

A dearly loved family member recently died.

You have been diagnosed with a terminal illness or suffered a tragic accident.

You have been the victim of a fire or robbery.

Your home has been foreclosed.

You have lost your job.

You have been a victim of violence.

Your anxiety or panic attacks have become unbearable.

Your depression has gotten a hold of you and won’t let go.

Being immersed in shock or conflicting and turbulent emotions, you may very well not be giving any thought to caring for yourself in important ways that can help you feel less vulnerable and more in control. Here are some suggestions that may be helpful.

1. Remember crisis by nature is time-limited; as such, it does not last indefinitely.

A crisis involves a precipitating event. It can occur developmentally or situationally. An example of a developmental crisis might be a relationship that slowly erodes until one person decides to leave. An example of a situational crisis could be receiving a terminal diagnosis or your house burns to the ground.

As severely upset and out of control as you may initially feel, it is good to know that it is not humanly possible to sustain such an intense level of feeling indefinitely. In the extreme, if this were the case, it would most likely tax your ability to remain in touch with reality. As confused as you may feel, or perhaps feeling rather numb, being in crisis and how you respond to it, does not represent mental illness. Rather, crisis is a temporary state of affairs where your customary level of functioning can be severely challenged. Overtime, the intensity of the crisis experience will subside.

2. Try to determine what it is you need.

I say “try” because making decisions or determinations about anything early on after a crisis can be a difficult task. However, determining what you need and getting these needs met is caring for yourself at a crucial time. In no way is this selfishness. Taking care of yourself means caring enough about yourself to see that your needs are met, as best you can determine what they are.

Depending on the circumstance of the crisis there can be quite specific considerations. As an example, in the event of domestic violence the matter of your physical safety may be paramount. If you suddenly find yourself homeless due to fire or flood then actual shelter becomes the critical issue. Foreclosure on your home raises the same issue of shelter.

In any crisis event emotional support is important. In addition, the situation may be such that some assistance with routine activities of daily living is required. This might be most critical if you are coping with sudden and limiting physical injuries. Of course, any of these issues will be addressed within the context of the supportive network of people you have, or don’t have, around you.

3. Try to determine a plan of action and get help where needed.

Explore what ways of coping have worked for you in the past when confronted by a crisis situation. Ask for what you need. No matter how much we might sometimes wish other people could read our minds, it isn’t apt to happen. As one woman put it, “If no one knows you need it, you probably aren’t going to get it!” You will have to speak up. Without being unreasonable, it is likely what you request can happen. Again, however, you will need to make your needs known.

Is there someone in your circle who knows you particularly well but is not directly affected by the crisis you find yourself in? Perhaps this is the person who can best help you think through your needs and how you can get them met. One thing you might do is identify someone in your life who is willing to act as an additional “set of ears” if you must have multiple contacts with professional service providers, legal or medical.

Particularly critical in the beginning when you may be experiencing shock and disbelief, is having a person you trust to accompany you to appointments with professionals. This can be very helpful. This person can not only hear what is said to you, but in the actual appointment may raise important questions you have not thought about in advance.

4. Recognize your emotions--or lack thereof--and behaviors as your unique and legitimate experience.

Examples of emotions you may be experiencing include shock, denial, anger, rage, frustration, disappointment, anxiety... a gamut of emotional responses are possible. There may be guilt if you are a survivor of a crisis; there may be irrational guilt. In some losses/crises if there is no reason to feel guilty, you might find yourself assigning guilt to yourself just the same.

Recognize that initially you may have difficulty with concentration and making decisions. You may experience confusion. There might be flashbacks or nightmares related to the event. Normal cognitive responses may well be disrupted. This disruption may be short or longer. The severity of the crisis can be expected to influence your responses. Response to crisis is person-specific. Although there are commonalities in reactions, each person’s experience is unique. Regardless of what you feel, know that it is most likely normal.

You may not feel like participating in familiar activities. Your customary job or academic performance may suffer. You might blame others for the crisis or the outcome of it. You might blame God or the universe. Previous participation in your faith community might drop off or even end for a time. Sleep can become an issue, too little or too much. The same can be said for food. You may feel irritable in general and find it hard to contain expressions of anger, very often lashing out at those people who care the most about you. Again, your behavioral responses are as individual as you are.

5. Allow yourself to experience your emotions.

You are entitled to your emotions and feelings. This is not the time to “be strong”; and pretend that you are doing ok, when you are not. In fact, you probably can’t pull off a pretense even if you tried. Cry or get angry if you need to or just “be” with whatever it is you are feeling. Intense emotions like sadness, grief, anger, rage, remorse, jealousy are all normal reactions depending on your situation.

Allow yourself to be human. Emotional outbursts or behaviors labeled as “odd” by observers are likely to be more acceptable to others in the early days and weeks than some further time later on. Remember, you need to allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you are currently feeling regardless of what others think.

6. Recognize the role of grief in crisis and allow for its presence.

Grieving is part of crisis. However, while crisis, as such, is delimited, grieving is not. Grieving does not lend itself to a specific timeframe. Unfortunately, expectations for persons in grief do not fit well with the reality of it. Too often, the person is expected to “get over it” as quickly as possible. Your time-table is your own. It is more realistic to say that feelings change over time than to imagine there is some precise ending.

Grieving requires immense emotional energy. All crises involve some sort of grief response. If only for this reason, you need to make an effort to take care of yourself. In response to loss or a sudden crisis, you have many questions you must answer, such as “Who am I now? Who am I without my beloved? How can I manage such a momentous change? How can I go on? How do I even begin? What did I do to deserve this?” Such questions represent conflicts, requiring time and attention.

Responding to a major crisis, grieving, and coming to terms with what has happened to you is not a passive process. Although grief and other intense feelings are part of crisis response, your feelings do not have to automatically make you a helpless victim. All of us make choices in grief. Figuratively speaking, you choose to live or you choose to die. Choosing to live, you can be in charge of at least parts of your experience. You can choose to be actively involved in your responses. Choosing to die means you are at the mercy of the tides of grief and abandon your journey to the anxieties, suggestions, directions, and demands of others.

It may be helpful to remember that grieving takes some time. However, time alone does not heal; what you do with the time does. Still popular is the notion that grieving occurs in stages; it really does not. A more accurate description might be that of a roller-coaster with times you feel more “up” and times when you feel more “down”. You may switch back and forth between looking back and then, eventually, more and more, find yourself looking forward. There are different styles of grieving, none of which belong to one gender or the other. You may find you are very emotionally expressive of your feelings. Someone else may choose to funnel the same kinds of feelings into physical activities. For you, probably both will have their place. The right way to grieve, if you will, is your personal and unique way.

7. Spend some time alone.

Include individual care just for you. Caring for yourself can mean planning special moments for you alone. Take time to take a walk. Take time to write in your journal. Take time to spend with yourself, whether in prayer, contemplation, or meditation. Take time to be patient with yourself. Taking time for yourself can often help you heal more quickly and, perhaps, completely. Choose the paths of your own journey respecting your own needs. Realize that your needs deserve respect and consideration. Choose to take care of them. Choose to kindly take care of yourself.

8. Realize that crisis provides opportunity as well as pain.

The Chinese character for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity indicating that the Chinese understand the potential for growth when one has experienced a crisis.

A crisis can be life-defining. Because you cannot remain as the same person you were before your crisis you may find your world-view has changed. Your attitudes and beliefs may have been reshaped. Some changes may be very visible. Such as, you may discover that because of your crisis experience you are more compassionate toward others. You may discover you have patience with other people that did not seem available to you before. You may find you have developed some tangible skills you had not previously been able to execute. As an example, as a widow you have mastered financial matters that had been previously handled by your spouse. You may be driving on trips by yourself where, previously, you probably couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. In moving through crisis you may find qualities within yourself that cause you to take a different direction in your career.

Crisis is temporary disorder in your life. In mourning and grief you are, for a time, in disorder. When you are struggling with grave changes precipitated by crisis you are becoming someone you were not before. You may have had to make choices you never expected to make. You are changed. Eventually, looking back, you may decide you are even more satisfied with the “new” you than you were with the “old” you.

9. Trust that you will get through this.

In fact, you have already begun. You would not be here reading this if you were not already in the process of grappling with the crisis that has affected you. This seeking out of information is a positive step. You likely have experience coping with adversity in your past. Additionally, human beings are generally resilient, sometimes amazingly so. You have resiliency also, even if you can’t see it now, or have to dig deep to find it. Although it may be difficult to consider at the present moment, when you look back at what has happened to you and how you survived the situation very likely you will have some reasons to compliment yourself.

10. Don’t be afraid to seek professional help.

Sometimes a professional's guidance can make a major difference. It may just be too difficult to go through your experience alone. You may find yourself feeling stuck and irrationally fearful of things that remind you of the crisis.

If you should need professional help, give yourself permission to seek it out. Asking for this help is not a sign of weakness but, rather, a sign of strength. This can be another way of taking care of yourself. Those who seek professional help in a crisis, not only get the support they need, they often heal more quickly.

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About Lois Sugarman, Ph.D.

Lois Sugarman, Ph.D. provides Thought Field Therapy services for people experiencing any number of crises, such as relationship loss, death, trauma, present and past abuse and their accompanying emotions. She provides her services over the telephone. She resides in Wake Forest, near Raleigh, North Carolina.

Contact Lois by phone at 919-562-7905 for a 30-minute free consultation or e-mail her at laux5737@nc.rr.com. She can also be reached at www.personaltherapeuticresources.com.