Take Control of Life's Crises Today! A Practical Guide. Robert Haynes H.

our genetic makeup, some individuals are more strongly and immediately affected by crises and stressors in life. Some people have a short form serotonin gene, which makes one likely to react more strongly to a threat or crisis. Those with the long form of this gene are able to deliberate more about whether the threat is serious. It is nearly impossible to determine whether your reactions are a result of genetics, learning or some combination of those. Regardless, I believe you can learn a new system of responses.

      Time distortion occurs in a crisis. You hear people talking about how the earthquake seemed as though it lasted an hour when in fact it was 30 seconds. Even that difficult conversation you are having with your teenager about coming in after curfew seems to go on and on when in fact it only lasted a few minutes. Crisis situations slow down our sense of time.

      Our thinking and problem-solving abilities may be reduced by as much as 80–90 percent in an extreme crisis. No wonder we find ourselves saying after a car accident, “I didn’t know what to do first, whom to call, or what to say.” Most times in a crisis we react with emotion—fear, anger, disbelief—and our thinking processes take a back seat. It is important to recover as quickly as possible to get our thinking working for us so we can manage the situation. People who are unable to recover quickly from their emotional response, may need a long time to figure out what they need to do to manage the situation.

      As we successfully manage our crises, we develop strength and confidence in our ability to handle future crises. Likewise, if we are overwhelmed by crises on a regular basis, it is more likely that we will not be able to handle future stressors and will feel overwhelmed. Psychologist and author Don Meichenbaum believes we can learn, practice, and apply coping skills to inoculate ourselves to crises and stressors. He coined the term “Stress Inoculation Training,” or SIT, to describe this method of developing tolerance to stress. SIT involves learning about stress and your own response to stressors, acquiring skills for coping and then rehearsing or practicing those skills, and finally applying these learned skills across increasing levels of stressors. SIT is a comprehensive therapeutic approach that has been used with considerable success.

      So what does this all mean for you? First, you should expect some kind of emotional reaction, and second, you can expect to recover with time. A lot has to do with how you have been able to manage yourself in the past, how you perceive the situation, and how well prepared and practiced you are to handle the current situation. Life presents us with daily crises—some big ones and many small ones—and this is the practice ground on which we will learn how to cope and be prepared for the larger crises that will come along.

      We all experience crises in life and we react differently, but we can identify some common patterns. It helps to be able to identify the type of crisis you are experiencing and to understand how you are reacting and what you are telling yourself about the crisis. The next chapter will help you assess more specifically how you handle various crisis situations as you identify what you need to learn to be better able to cope with crises.