Crisis Intervention
Promoting Resilience & Resolution
Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
CE credits can be earned for this presentation at https://allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/36/c/
Objectives
~ Resilience and Transcendence
~ Crisis Resolution: The Change Process
~ Making Contact: The Power of Connecting
~ Making Meaning: Transforming a Crisis Narrative
~ Managing Emotional Arousal
~ Envisioning Possibilities: Creative Coping
~ Crisis Intervention with families
Resilience and Transcendence
~ Crisis is a point of threat and opportunity (-/+)
~ Six facets of crisis experience (BASICS)
~ Behavioral
~ Affective (Emotional)
~ Somatic
~ Interpersonal
~ Cognitive
~ Spiritual
Crime victim | Death of a Loved One | Natural Disaster | Secondary Trauma by Media in Children
Resilience and Transcendence
~ Validation of the experience is crucial (LUVE)
~ Listen
~ Understand
~ Validate
~ Explore client strengths
Crisis Resolution: The Change Process
~ Chaos Theory
~ Chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then ‘appear' to become random.
~ Each point in a chaotic system is close to other points with significantly different future paths. An arbitrarily small change of the current path may lead to significantly different future behavior.
Crisis Resolution: The Change Process
~ Complexity Theory
~ Emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems.
~ Systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules (Reward principle)
~ Individual behaviors and choices are more important than executive plans in an organization.
~ Focus on self-organization instead of management control.
~ Use small changes and interventions
~ Encourage conflict and change
~ This may seem to push the person to an unstable situation, but the person actually can gain improvements from the healthy edge of chaos (Comfort zone)
The Change Process: 3 Principles
~ Large changes result from small changes
~ Change can begin suddenly and resolve rapidly (Microsoft Updates)
~ Change is a complete reordering. Something new emerges and noting is ever the same
Solution vs. Resolution
~ Solutions are largely outside yourself
~ Stronger security
~ Behavior alterations (Preparation/prevention)
~ Resolutions are internal events
~ Alteration in mood
~ Shift in thinking
~ Change of heart
Crime victim | Death of a Loved One | Natural Disaster
Making Contact: The Power of Connecting
~ Reconnecting
~ Social supports are a powerful buffer
~ Connecting to others is a fundamental human need
~ Humans are hardwired to help each other
~ Humans develop empathy even before verbal skills
Making Contact: The Power of Connecting
~ Receiving support
~ Use reaching out questions
~ Provide encouragement
~ Acknowledge the crisis experience
~ Make positive observations
~ Be tentative rather than authoritative, owning your impressions
~ Highlight the survivor in crisis
~ Invite the person to talk (or not) about the experience
Making Meaning: Transforming a Crisis
~ Crisis can shatter people’s assumptions about the world
~ Basic Assumptins
~ The world is benevolent
~ The world is meaningful and predictable
~ The self is worthy / Life is fair
~ As humans, we need to create meaning
Making Meaning: Transforming a Crisis
~ Telling the Story
~ Survivors often have slightly different accounts of the crisis each time they tell it
~ Changing recollections are the result of trying to find meaning and resolve crisis
~ Help clients rectify discrepancies by pointing out positive change or evidence of strength
~ Listen for the hero in the tragedy
Narrative
~ The narrative can be used to help people explore the bigger picture
~ The narrative can be continued into a positive resolution
~ The narrative can be explored in terms of focus and character development (what role did others play or could they play)
~ Ask making meaning questions
~ What have you discovered about yourself?
~ What sense do you make of this?
~ What do you see as the purpose for this?
~ What keeps you going through this difficult time?
Managing Emotional Arousal
~ People in crisis experience
~ Distressful emotions: Fear, anger, grief
~ Positive emotions: Resolve, courage, compassion, hope
~ Highlight the positive
~ Handling Distress
~ Catharsis is not necessary
~ Expression is…
~ Arousing Resolve
~ Performance quality is curvilinear proportion to emotional arousal
Taking Action
~ Envisioning Possibilities
~ Explore goals
~ Create goals that are positive
~ Create a goal statement… “When you achieve this…”
~ Use scaling…. Getting from 1 to 10 (1 is the crisis)
~ Creative Coping
~ Examine current behaviors in terms of creative coping
~ Educate about common behavioral changes in response to stress/crisis
~ Using Resources
Tools
~ Refer to the acute crisis in the past tense
~ Describe resolution and coping in the present
~ Special case: Flashbacks and nightmares
~ Have been/were vs. are…. You have been having flashbacks
~ Before you …what are you doing…
~ Transform crisis metaphors
~ I feel trapped…. “And when you begin to escape from the trap, what is the first thing you will be doing?”
~ I feel overwhelmed. “When you decide to start sharing some of this load with someone else, to whom will you turn, and what will you want them to do?”
Tools cont…
~ Reframing
~ Situational context (global vs specific)
~ Temporal context (Stable/ongoing vs. changeable/time-limited)
~ Normalize negative cognitions
~ Enhancing emotions of resolve
~ Look for exceptions to the distress
~ Daily inventories
~ Narratives
~ Ask presumptive questions of resolve…”When things improve…”
~ Reflect emotions of resolve
Tools cont…
~ Moving On
~ As you begin to resolve this painful time in your life, how your life be different?
~ When you leave here, what is the first thing you see yourself doing?
~ What do you see as your next step?
Finding the Pony
~ Parents tried to teach their son that life wasn’t fair by making him shovel a room full of manure
~ Parent’s returned at the end of the day to pick up the child.
~ What happened???
Families and Couples in Crisis
~ When one member of the system is in crisis, it impacts the entire system
~ Families and couples may face developmental crises
~ Family members need to learn LUVE skills
~ Listen
~ Understand
~ Validate
~ Enhance resolve
Summary
~ Resilience and Transcendence
~ Crisis Resolution: The Change Process
~ Making Contact: The Power of Connecting
~ Making Meaning: Transforming a Crisis Narrative
~ Managing Emotional Arousal
~ Envisioning Possibilities
~ Creative Coping