Tag: crisis

You feel your heart beating harder and faster in your chest. A lump forms in your throat. The sound of the person talking to you fades into the background as your own thoughts and concerns become all-consuming. Maybe you feel a turning in your stomach or no longer feel content to stand still. You feel like you are losing your mind!

Well, there’s a little bit of truth to that. Dan Siegal, an author and professor of psychiatry, uses a fun analogy to break down the brain and how it works in situations like these. At the risk of oversimplifying, we’ll name two main characters in our brain: the guard dog (aka our brain’s limbic regions) and the wise owl (aka our brain’s cerebrum). The main role of the guard dog is to protect us from danger, and to do it fast! The main role of the wise owl is to help us think through things, using logic and reason.

In these moments when we feel like we are losing our mind, our guard dog has sensed danger ...

Although crisis is often unpredictable, there are predictable phases that we experience. Knowing these might allow a struggle to be normalized.

Phases of a crisis: Impact stage - learning new information that is overwhelming. This may include being stunned, numb, immediate grief, anger etc. This lasts up to 2-3 days but can be experienced in as little as moments.

Withdrawal/Confusion - this stage is where we recoil, go inward, and try to process what this new development means. Depression can be a part of this stage as well. This might be cycled through in a few days or it might take weeks or even months to process through, depending on the magnitude of what is being experienced.

Adjustment stage - This is where change is happening with or without our permission and the crisis experience starts to become familiar. We might begin to understand our choices with moving forward. New normals and patterns begin to ...