Recently, I was watching a number of natural disasters creating unprecedented devastation.   Events like this are happening more often and with more force all over the world, and unfortunately, it looks like a trend that will only continue to grow in frequency and magnitude. 

As a trauma therapist, I work with individuals struggling with various kinds of crisis experiences and, with individuals such as First Responders and the Military on how to prepare for future crisis situations so they are physically, mentally, and emotionally able to respond. 

This, by no means, is meant to feed into or fuel fear around crisis situations but rather to arm you with some straightforward, actionable strategies and knowledge.

I will be doing a longer more detailed blog on navigating crisis situations, but I thought it important to do a very practical, short, skills-based episode.

When faced with a crisis, it is important to understand that panic is a natural response to stress and danger.  In some situations, panic can motivate individuals to act swiftly to protect themselves or others.  However, in other cases, it can hinder effective decision-making and problem-solving, or completely override your nervous system and put you into a freeze or shock response.

Today we are going to cover:

1. Some of the common factors that contribute to panic during a crisis.
2. Strategies you can use to stay calm and collected during an unexpected crisis.
3. Basic Recovery techniques after a crisis

Make sure you stick around to the end because the Recovery aspect after a crisis is incredibly important to get you back to a healthy baseline and restore energy reserves.

Common Factors Contributing to Panic:

Fear of the Unknown: A crisis situation is by nature destabilizing in some way causing uncertainty and unpredictability.  When humans are faced with an increased level of uncertainty and unpredictability, this can trigger anxiety and fear.

Loss of Control: It is common for people to feel a loss of control during crisis situations.  This can show up environmentally such as in natural disasters or even loss of control over your body mobility.  It could even look like an unexpected financial crisis with no immediate way to control or fix what is happening.  Getting stuck or fixated on this loss of control can lead to a sense of helplessness, and that is not where you want to be.

Perceived Threat to Safety: Anytime your sense of safety feels threatened, whether physical, emotional, or social this can trigger your fight-or-flight response and contribute to panic.

Social Influence: It is important to note that if people around you start to panic, it is more likely for you to fall into panic as well. Knowing this ahead of time and using some very basic but effective strategies will help you keep calm in the midst of people panicking around you.

I’m sure you have seen this where one person or small group of people gets scared and starts yelling and running, then pretty quickly there is an entire mob of people yelling and running.  Most of whom have no idea why.  This is a predictable behavior – and if you are aware that this can happen you can counteract the effects of chaos around you by staying present, grounded, and calculating.

Information Overload: It is important to be as informed as possible; however, if the information you are receiving is the same over and over again it can increase fear, uncertainty and panic.  We saw this with 9/11 and during the Pandemic.  Take breaks from the news or social media to calm and reorient yourself.

Tolerance Baseline: Based on your history of trauma or past negative experiences will determine your tolerance to different levels of distress and unpredictability. If you know you have a reduced window of tolerance to distress it is important to double down on regulation skills during a crisis. 

Again, remember that panic is a normal human response.  Your nervous system engages into a fight-or-flight response however if your sympathetic nervous system engages to much it will blunt your ability to think clearly, problem-solve effectively, and in some cases feel paralyzing.

The magic is being able to effectively down-regulate your nervous system independent of what is going on around you to ensure you stay calm, clear-headed and adaptable to quickly…and sometimes not so quickly changing situations.

How to avoid Panic or Regain Control from Panic:

So if you know that panic is an overactivation of your sympathetic nervous system then your goal is to intentionally downregulate your nervous system to bring your body back under your control, your mind back online and emotions regulated. 

The mind tends to get tunnel-visioned and scattered, and emotions become highly dysregulated

The STOP acronym can help focus the down-regulation process. 

STOP:

Stop: Pause and take a moment.

Think: Assess the situation

Observe: Gather information about what is happening.

Plan: Decide on a course of action

Lets break the S in STOP down and add important skills.

When you Stop, pause and take a moment, you are taking a moment to get back into your body and let the logical, rational part of the mind come back online. 

5-Senses Grounding: This simple but powerful technique gets you back into the moment and into your body. 

1. Look around you and say out loud 5 things that you can see.
2. What are 4 things that you can feel?
3. What are 3 things you can hear?
4. What are 2 things you can smell?
5. What is 1 thing you can taste?

5-Senses Grounding is quick to use and leverages your senses to anchor you back into your body and into the moment.  ‘In the moment’ is the only place we can make strategic decisions and access creative problem-solving. 

Extend Your Exhale

One of the fastest and most effective ways to manually downshift from high sympathetic nervous system activation to a more manageable state is by extending the amount of time you exhale compared to your inhales.  This will manually reduce your heart rate, lower your blood pressure, increase efficient oxygen exchange in the lungs, and enhance emotional regulation.

You can try this right now.  Take a breath in for a count of 4 then slowly exhale for a count of 6-8.  Repeat this for 10 rounds, and you will see an immediate shift in your mental, physical, and emotional state.

Next, we have the T in STOP: Think

During a crisis, it is common for your mind to run with worst-case scenarios, black-and-white thinking, magnifying or minimizing the event.   Where your mind goes your body will follow.  This type of thinking will only serve to increase disorganization and work against you.

Once you are out of panic, back in your body and mind online, take an assessment of the situation.  Remember to look at facts as facts.  I know this sounds straightforward, but, we are meaning-making machines and tend to emotionally identify with what is happening.  Take the information coming in as data.  That will let you assess and evaluate the situation unclouded by unnecessary mental chatter and help you from getting emotionally derailed. 

Next, we have the O in STOP: Observe 

This is similar to ‘Think’.  This step encourages you to observe what is going on around you and to continue to collect that data.  You want to be like the Eye of a Storm.  Calm, collected and calculated.  Through all these steps, extending your exhales and being vigilant to not let your thoughts or emotions derail you is a constant process.  When you are Observing, see if you can find a clear direction or decision that can be made that is not being informed by the chaos or panic around you.  Keep in mind, the situation may not be physically around you at the moment, but being broadcast through the news or social media. 

Lastly, we have P in STOP: Plan

From a calm, collected, and informed as possible position make a plan or course of action.  This will look very different depending on what the crisis situation is.  Once you have this plan to execute remember to be adaptable and flexible.  

Recovery After A Crisis

Recovery after a crisis is a complex process that involves physical, emotional and often social aspects.  There are some foundational things to consider while recovering from a crisis situation. 

Intentionally downregulate your Nervous System: One of the most important aspects of recovery is to encourage your nervous system away from being locked into fight-or-flight and access the rest, recover and restore aspect of the parasympathetic nervous system.  I have a 6-week course that specifically trains you how to do this efficiently.  You can find the link below if you are interested in diving into those powerful techniques.

Patience: Be patient with yourself and those around you.  Everyone will process what happened differently and in their own unique ways.   Keep in mind that you might have waves of re-activation roll through your body impacting you mentally and emotionally.  This is normal and just part of the process.  Use your extended exhale breathing and let the sensations wash over you naturally.  You want to avoid holding onto the fear embedded in these waves and remember it is just your body clearing out the experience. 

Sleep: Sleep is one of the most regenerative and important aspects of recovery.  You not only recover on a cellular level but your mind has a natural process during REM sleep that digests the information received throughout the day into long and short term memory.  You want to give your body the opportunity to digest the experience in a healthy way to avoid it getting stuck in your nervous system and internalizing into trauma.  If for some reason after a month of the incident you are still struggling with the mental and emotional consequences of what happened it is important to reach out to someone trained in helping move the experience out of your body.

Self-Care:  It is important to ensure you stay hydrated and nourish your body with healthy food if you are able to. If you are still highly activated, you may not register that you need food or water and this process needs to become much more intentional. 

Simple things like: have you taken care of personal hygiene? Are you breathing? Everything that used to come naturally before will take more intentional effort as your nervous system is able to regulate, and you come back to baseline.

Self-Soothing: Find self-soothing activities that are available to you.  One thing you can do for yourself or encourage others to do is hum.  This will help tone and access your parasympathetic nervous system, calming your body.  I use this regularly throughout my day and notice a regulating and calming effect.  Weighted blankets or just some sort of extra weight on the body will help send signals internally that it is safe to relax and discharge the tension your mind and body are holding. 

Connect Socially: Even if you connect with loved ones or individuals who have gone through a similar experience.  After a crisis, it is common for people to isolate.  Reach out to others in a way that feels safe and supportive to you.  Studies show that individuals who connect with others who have gone through similar crisis situations and share their experiences recover faster and avoid PTSD symptoms better than those who isolate.

Stay Present and Keep It Simple Sweetheart (KISS):

After a highly demanding situation like a crisis, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the small things.  Use the 5 senses, grounding and mindfulness techniques to stay in the moment and in your body.  Tasks that have been easy in the past might take more effort.  Again, practice patience with yourself and those around you; slow down; move intentionally, and give your mind and body the time it needs to unwind the chaos it has just experienced. 

“Recovery after a Crisis is a Process NOT a Race. “

Recovery During A Crisis 

It is important to note here that in the case of crisis situations that are enduring will take long-term engagement such as the pandemic we all lived through, or a situation that will take a week or so to resolve, the need for intermittent doses of recovery is paramount.

You need to insert moments of rest and recovery if at all possible.  This can look like a few moments to close your eyes, reduce the incoming stimulus, turn media coverage off for a short period, and intentionally use that time to regroup and regulate. 

I will make another blog specifically addressing strategies around navigating long-term crisis situations.  But for now, it is just important to apply the same concepts and skills already covered, inserting them periodically throughout the day(s) or weeks(s) of a long-term disruption. 

“We cannot stop natural disasters, but we can arm ourselves with knowledge…”

~ Petra Nemcova

Knowing what to expect during a crisis situation and strategies to keep calm, collected and critically thinking arms you with a way to navigate uncertainty and unpredictability.  The more adept you are at navigating chaos and keeping yourself regulated the more help you can be to those around you that have been swallowed by panic and fear. 

If you are interested in diving deeper into 6-weeks of powerful strategies to condition and regulate your nervous system, follow the link below.  As a Trauma Therapist, I have seen the techniques I put into this course save people's careers and families.  Learning how to stay in the Eye of the Storm during chaos is a skill that more of us need to learn. 

I hope this was helpful to you; please share this with your families and loved ones.

The more prepared we can be during unpredictable and challenging times, the better off we will all be!

And remember, arm yourself with Skills – Knowledge & Connection

Fear will only cripple your ability to respond effectively or help those around you. 

Follow the link below for a deep dive into invaluable techniques and strategies to condition and regulate your nervous system so you can be better equipped for crises and more effectively navigate life in general!

https://www.thereframe.net/RoadtoResiliencePhysiologyFirst