I’ve been working on a book about crisis for quite some time, while also personally going through various crises during that same period. So I’ve been actually experiencing crisis while also observing the experience to see what I can learn.
So what qualifies as a crisis? A crisis is when we’re faced with a situation in our life that we find challenging, and in which the issues involved are very important to us, and we question or doubt whether we actually have the resources and the capacity to resolve the situation. But it’s a very personal and subjective thing. It’s more a question of how we’re subjectively viewing and experiencing the circumstances that we’re in, rather than an objective truth.
Many of our crises have to do with loss – loss of health, loss of our partner, our dog, our job, loss of our professional identity, loss of connection. Losing something we value, whatever that may be, can upset our equilibrium and leave us on shaky ground, at least for a while.
So I’d like to turn this idea of crisis into something that flows through time. This is the best way that I’ve been able to depict it. So you start with an event. And again, that event can be that you just found out that your partner has been having an affair for 20 years. Or you just got a serious health diagnosis that you may die from. Or maybe you find yourself in a detention center. Something happens that turns your life upside down or inside out in some way. So that is the event.
And at some point you begin trying to navigate through that crisis, as if you were in a boat on the sea or navigating through a maze.. If it’s a health condition, you might be making calls, seeing doctors, taking medication, looking for a support group or doing research. You’re making a lot of effort.
And then as you begin to get through that crisis, there are a couple of possibilities that can occur. So one is resilience. And resilience is your ability to bounce back, right? It is your ability to face adversity and find your way back to the ground that you were previously standing on.
The vast majority of people who experience a crisis actually do bounce back. That doesn’t mean that they don’t suffer. They may suffer tremendously, but they do find their way back to the ground that they were on before. That’s the most common outcome when we look at people who have gone through a crisis.
Another possibility from this trajectory of resilience is that you start to also experience growth. In other words, the adversity itself, the crisis itself, is allowing you to grow beyond where you were when it started. The term used for this is post-traumatic growth syndrome. And it means that you come out of that experience of crisis and navigation in a position that’s either stronger, wiser, more capable, understanding or compassionate than you were before the event happened. And that change can also lead to a new identity.
And then the third possibility is that you end up in a place of trauma, that you’re traumatized by your experience of dealing with that crisis, and that you continue to suffer for a long while or maybe forever. It means that you get kind of stuck in that place. And this is the smallest percentage of the three trauma outcomes.
The term PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) was first included in the DSM (the Diagnostic Manual for Mental Health Disorders) in 1980 and was originally used for those who had experienced a particularly traumatizing event – maybe in combat or as a hostage, or in a terrorist event. But in the subsequent 45 years since that time, the definition of PTSD and trauma has expanded so much that there are now people who suggest that about 90% of the population has experienced serious trauma.
You may be familiar with The Body Keeps the Score, a book that suggests that trauma is the norm, that most of us go through trauma, particularly in our childhood years, and that we need to treat trauma if we hope to be free of it. I disagree with that perspective and the vast majority of research suggests that it’s not true. If you see it differently, I’d be happy to have a conversation with you about it at some point. It’s a theme that seems to be of great interest these days.
My follow up article will contain guidance from Japanese Psychology and Buddhism, in terms of coping successfully during times of crisis. There’s such a depth of wisdom to draw on and to learn from as we navigate through turbulent times.
