Coping with emotional crises

We can't avoid crises, but we can use them to help us grow psycho logically. In order to avoid emotional disorders that can result from crisis situations that overwhelm us, we human beings need ongoing "supplies" responsive to our needs at each level of growth and development. These supplies can be generally divided into three basic groups: physical, psychosocial, and sociocultural.¹

Physical supplies include food, clothing, shelter, sensory stimulation, and exercise, and are necessary for healthy growth and development.

Psychosocial supplies refer to the stimulation of our mental and emotional development through meaningful interactions within the family and with others who are significant to us in school, church, work, and the community. We usually refer to this area of supplies as the satisfaction of our interpersonal needs. Emotional disorder may occur if we have no opportunity to build relationships with those who can satisfy our normal needs.

Sociocultural supplies are those related to the customs and values of our culture and our social structure. The richer our cultural heritage, the more complicated are the problems we will probably be taught to handle. The more stable our society, the more likely it is to have provided us with problem-solving skills and a set of moral values to guide us in dealing with life's difficulties. ² A trusting, confiding relationship with a God who cares for us can enable us successfully to meet crisis situations that might otherwise overwhelm us.

The provision or lack of provision of these basic supplies develops our individual personality over a period of time. Sudden changes in our sup plies may lead to severe emotional instability, a state commonly referred to as emotional crisis. Usu ally, these sudden changes involve either a loss or at least a threat of loss of basic supplies or some kind of challenge associated with in creased demands.

In many individuals suffering from mental disorder, significant changes appear to have taken place during fairly short periods of crisis. These transitional periods are usually characterized by sudden psycholog ical upset, lasting from one to four weeks, which appear not to have been in themselves signs of mental disorder, but rather evidence of problems of adjustment in the face of a temporarily difficult problem. The problems involved can be both serious and unavoidable, such as the death of a loved one; loss or change of a job; threatened loss of a marriage relationship; a threat to health, such as illness or accident; or a change of role, such as going to college, getting married, or becoming a parent.

The common denominator in these potentially emotionally hazardous situations is that they represent a loss or threat of loss to our self-esteem, our needs for interpersonal closeness, or our sense of physical well-being. As humans, we are especially vulnerable in these areas.

Normally, our emotional stability is maintained by various personality mechanisms that enable us to adapt to stress. For example, if we have learned to cope with anxiety in part through compulsive behavior, during times of great stress we will often become increasingly compulsive in an attempt to maintain our emotional equilibrium. During such times, we may find it difficult to tolerate things out of place in an untidy kitchen or a cluttered office, and we anxiously and compulsively straighten and clean.

If our problem-solving mechanisms work, we are able to maintain our general sense of well-being. If our problem-solving mechanisms do not work, we experience increased frustration and anxiousness. This may progress to the point where we feel emotionally overwhelmed, and experience feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and disorganization in our thoughts and actions. At this point we are truly in a state of emotional crisis.

In this state, we almost always turn to those around us, our family, friends, teachers, pastors, family physicians, or other helping persons or agencies within our community. In so doing, we are either helped or hindered, depending on the awareness and expertise of those we turn to.

When any member of a family faces a crisis, the group as a whole is inevitably involved in one way or another. It is important that the activities of the family be directed to helping the person undergoing a crisis deal with his problem by some form of activity rather than by avoidance. For example, in the crisis of bereavement resulting from the death of a loved person, the sufferer must experience his loss and actively resign himself to the impossibility of ever again satisfying his needs through interaction with the deceased. He must physically and emotionally "bury the dead." Only after this has been done will he be free to seek fulfillment of his normal needs through meaningful interactions with others. The greatest danger is that family and friends may actively interfere with effective problem-solving by advocating avoidance of the problem, such as by encouraging the person to "be brave, don't cry, you'll feel better later." The crisis may thus suddenly be cut off, and false reassurance may be provided without the individual's having gone through the active process of experiencing and mastering his painful or negative feelings.

During crisis periods, an individual is even more dependent than usual on personal relationships, whether these add to his burdens or actively aid him in finding a satisfactory solution to his difficulties.

Careful examination of the history of psychiatric patients shows that, during certain of these crisis periods, the individual seems to have dealt with his problems in a maladjustive manner and to have emerged less healthy than he had been before the crisis. In such cases, the progression toward eventual mental illness seems to have accelerated during successive crisis periods. ³ The crisis period, then, is seen as a possible turning point in emotional development.

This view sees a crisis situation as a transitional period, presenting an individual both with an opportunity for personality growth and with the danger of increased vulnerability to mental disorder, depending to some extent on his way of handling the situation. Stimulating personal growth by exposing an individual to situations of increasing challenge and then helping him find constructive ways of mastering the resultant stress has long been used by parents and educators to foster character development. Resistance to mental disorder can be increased by helping the individual develop more effective problem-solving skills.

Every crisis presents both an opportunity for psychological growth and the danger of psychological deterioration. During periods of crisis, the individual may develop new socially acceptable, reality-based, problem-solving techniques that will add to his capacity to deal in a healthy way with future difficulties.