plan and practiced your new skills, you will be able to apply them in nearly any situation you encounter.
How to Get the Most From This Book
To get the maximum benefit from reading this book, you should read Chapters 1–6 and any of the specialty chapters that apply. You may streamline your experience by reading selected chapters. Here is a brief summary of what you can expect in each of the chapters. The first four chapters contain the essential introduction, understanding crisis, your self-assessment, and the program for learning to Take Control of Life’s Crises Today! If you only have time for the fundamentals, these four chapters provide a path you can follow on your own. Chapter 5, on resilience, and Chapter 6, on recovering from a crisis and practicing healthy self-care, are essential to developing a strong approach to crises now and in the future.
Three special chapters follow. If you are a parent or grandparent, or work with children in any fashion, Chapter 7, on preparing your child to cope with a crisis, is enlightening and empowering. Chapter 8 specifically focuses on the needs of teachers and other school workers and administrators. Chapter 9, for first responders, focuses on the stress first responders face and their special need for resilience as they are repeatedly sent out to help in times of crisis. Although their training may provide guidelines for action, first responders frequently lack resources for recovery and self-care.
You will get the most from this book if you are an active reader. Take time to think about your own experiences, and complete the exercises along the way. We learn by doing, not just by reading about doing. The more you participate in expanding your knowledge, the more likely it is that you will not only understand the concept of managing crises but actually be able to put these newfound skills into practice on a daily basis. Read, think, interact, challenge, practice, and implement. Begin to take control of your responses to life’s crises today.
Acknowledgments
Extensive research and reading went into the development of this book, but the insights I cherish most were gleaned from talking to people about their experiences and knowledge. I would like to thank the following individuals who provided input, case examples, or reviewed the manuscript at various stages: Patrick Callanan, James Daugherty, Michele Dignan, Jack Haynes, Andrew Heise, Charles T. Hendrix, John Keeley, Robert Macias, Crissa Markow, Michelle Muratori, Patricia Stalder, Roberta Stowe, Errin Taggart, Ian Taggart, Ryan Taggart, and Lisa Wolfe.
My thanks also go to Kay Mikel, manuscript editor, for her outstanding skill, wisdom, and guidance throughout the editorial process. I would like to give special thanks to Gerald Corey and Marianne Corey for their help with the manuscript, case examples, publishing resources, and their excellent guidance and modeling as brilliant writers and master therapists. Finally, thanks to my wife and best friend, Cheryl Haynes. Our frequent discussions of crisis topics and what we have learned from our own life experiences were invaluable in helping me shape this narrative.
Disclaimer
The material in this book is intended to help individuals, parents, teachers, first responders, and others in preparing themselves to better handle crises. This book is not intended as a substitute for training or counseling in the topics addressed. Anyone applying these ideas and methods in work settings should rely on agency policy and procedure as superseding the ideas presented in this book.
Information is constantly changing, with new research and theories being presented every day. The publisher and the author cannot be held responsible for the use of any of the ideas contained herein or for any error, omission, or dated material.
CHAPTER ONE
Crises Are Present in Daily Life
Most of us expect life to be good, easy, fun, and trouble-free; and we are surprised when it isn’t. We all experience minor crises on a daily basis—the kids, the job, money problems, plumbing problems, relationship issues, and more. We also experience larger, less frequent crises from time to time—natural disasters, a car accident, bankruptcy, divorce, and death. A crisis is any significant event or experience that occurs in your life that is stressful for you. It can be positive (a job promotion) or negative (a flat tire on the interstate).
Crises seem to be coming at us at an ever-increasing and alarming rate: the Newtown school shooting, the largest tornado ever recorded, the Boston Marathon bombings, three young women kidnapped in Cleveland and enslaved for 10 years. In the fall of 2012, the Northeast suffered through Superstorm Sandy, followed a few months later by a massive snowstorm. The National Weather Service reported that the United States broke the record for billion-dollar weather disasters in one year with 12 occurring in 2011. We experienced twisters, floods, snow, drought, heat, and wildfires with unprecedented frequency. Each of these events takes a major toll on those caught in them.
Historically, we have thought of crises as rare events, but with 24/7 news reporting on cable channels, alerts on our smartphones, and Internet access to the world, we are learning that there is a crisis somewhere in the world every minute of the day—tsunamis, starving children, rioting, school shootings, corrupt politicians, and murders by drug cartels, to name just a few. With the constant barrage of graphic details and the overwhelming extent and severity of the crises we hear about on a daily basis, we may become numb and lose our compassion for those we see suffering.
Because crises are a part of our everyday life, it is in our best interest to learn to handle them effectively—it is time for you to Take Control of Life’s Crises Today! I hope to provide you with the knowledge and skills to enable you to better handle every crisis that occurs in your life. Let me begin by describing a crisis in my own life, and how I handled it poorly and what I learned from that experience.
I Was a Basket Case When It Came to My Own Crisis
I lay in the hospital bed following a radical prostatectomy—surgical removal of the prostate gland laced with cancer—watching the seconds slowly tick by on that big elementary school style clock that now reads 2:10 a.m. The second hand pauses briefly with every tick. Every second now feels like a minute, every minute an hour. I have been in this bed now for 30 days straight; well, actually 30 hours, but it seems like 30 days. I resume reading an inconsequential story in a magazine. After a while I look up at my nemesis, the clock, and 2 minutes have passed. I am connected to a heart rate monitor that sounds an alarm every time my heart rate goes above 125 beats per minute. So far tonight, I must have sounded the alarm three dozen times. All I have to do is think irrationally about being confined to this bed for weeks or maybe months, perhaps a lifetime, and the alarm sounds again. My mind is controlling how my body reacts.
I like to think I handle crisis situations fairly well. I stay calm and do what needs doing in most situations. But this crisis “poked a button” for me, and I was unable to manage—I felt and acted a little crazy. Effective self-management enables us to feel in control and provides us with a sense of mastery. It allows us to influence, if not determine, the outcome of the crisis and the impact it will have on our life. Most of us handle some situations better than others, and some situations do not rise to the level of a crisis. But when we are in a crisis, we need to have a game plan in place, and I simply did not have one.
Finally, after what seems like 2 more days (it is now 2:30 a.m.), I signal the nurse with my combo remote TV control and nurse call button. When she arrives at my bedside, I tell her that I seem to be a little anxious and maybe I could have a sleeping pill. She cracks a slight smile and says, “Yes, we’ve been watching your heart rate jump around all night.” I go on to say that I am quite anxious about never getting out of this hospital and ask if I could also have something to ease the neurotic anxiety. She says there are no orders for any such medications, so I go back to reading, watching mindless early morning TV, playing a handheld video game, and watching the seconds tick by ever so slowly as I listen to the periodic screech of the heart rate monitor alarm.
The first evening after surgery and the next day as well, I had experienced low blood pressure and had fainted once shortly after sitting up in a chair the first day and nearly did the same the second day. My doctor thought it was a reaction to the anesthesia and ordered that I remain flat on my back until my blood pressure stabilized. A nightmare of fears cascaded through my mind. What if I am confined to bed for the rest of