Audio Tidbits

A crisis may be black.  The individual is down, very down.  His words come very slowly; his movements are slow.  He sees no point in anything.  His just being alive makes things worse.  He does not want to kill himself.  He just wants to stop living, to get out.  He is tired of playing the game.  The hassle is too much.  His mood is very black.  He is slowing down and has no interest or motivation in going on.  As we talk with him, his speech may seem somewhat slurred, and his words may have a thick and mumbly quality about them.  If we are talking with him on the telephone, especially, our initial reaction may be that he is intoxicated.  It is critical for us to get beyond seeing him as a drunk and to get to a point where we understand that we are dealing with a black crisis.  As we talk, the individual seems exhausted, appears to have no energy, and may give us the impression that he either wants to, or is about to, go to sleep.  We may be frustrated and feel tempted to terminate our communication with him.  It takes all of our effort and concentration to pay attention to and focus on the individual and his crisis.  Black crises are seen considerably less often than red and yellow crises; however, they are by far the most difficult with which to deal.

You are talking with a seventy-year-old woman whose husband died a few months ago.  Her children all live in other states and do not come to visit her very often.  Many of her friends have died, and she has no particular interests outside her home.  Her neighbors, who have called you in, are concerned because she does not come out of her house but just sits in her chair staring off into space.

She says: ‘Please go away.  I don’t want to talk to anyone.  [You say: You seem pretty tired and depressed.]  I’m okay.  Don’t worry about me.  Everything is fine.  I’ll just sit here until it’s over.  I hope it doesn’t take too long.  I’m so tired and want things to quit.  [You say: It makes me sad to see you so sad.]  I’m not sad.  Everything is fine.  It won’t be too much longer now.  He’s coming back to get me soon.  [You say: It’s a pretty day, and your neighbors are worried about you.]  There aren’t any pretty days anymore.  The neighbors shouldn’t worry.  I’m okay.  It won’t be much longer now. …

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A crisis may be yellow.  In a yellow crisis, the individual is afraid, anxious, really uptight.  The crisis is yellow, like a blazing fire.  People in yellow crises are frequently crying; seem desperate, very nervous, and tremble; and sometimes make us feel very protective, as if we wanted to hold them and tell them things are going to be okay.  They seem like frightened, very upset children.  In a yellow crisis, individuals frequently tell us that they feel confused, they cannot think straight, everything seems to be falling apart around them.  All of their anxiety and nervousness may make us feel a little frightened, at a loss as to what to do, somewhat overwhelmed.

Yellow crises are the most typical crisis situation.  When the interaction between the individual and his total situation deteriorates or breaks down, he usually becomes somewhat apprehensive, frightened, anxious, and confused.

A young man calls you on the hot line.  His voice quivers and he sniffles as he talks.  I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Things are falling apart.  I feel like running.  I can’t go home.  [You ask: What happened?]  My girl friend gave back my ring.  She doesn’t want to see me anymore.  I really love her.  I can’t get along without her.  I flunked my chemistry exam.  I feel like I’m going to explode.  I can’t stand it.  My parents will have a fit when they find out about my chemistry grade.  She’s with a friend of mine.  I don’t know where I’m going to get money for tuition next quarter.  I can’t live without her.  I’d be better off dead.  I can’t stand it.

The now potential in a yellow crisis is that the individual may do almost anything to escape the hurt, the confusion, the pain of being so anxious and uptight.  He does not understand what is happening to him and frequently feels like he may be losing his mind.  A yellow crisis is, for the individual, an extremely uncomfortable and emotionally painful state.  It is like being in an emotional fire, and people will try anything that occurs to them as a possible way of escaping.  They are tempted to run, to kill themselves, or to do anything else that might make the pain go away.  The confusion, nervousness, inability to think straight, and extreme discomfort, of course, are powerful forces working against calm, rational, and sensible judgment and planning.  That is to say, the self-resolution factor in a yellow crisis is very low.  In crisis communication, our goal when dealing with a yellow crisis is gradually to calm and put out the fire.  If we are able to do that, the individual will be better able to think calmly and rationally about his situation, that is, the self-resolution factor increases. …

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Crises come in red, yellow, or black.  An individual in a red crisis is angry.  He is really angry, he may be yelling, he feels the world is unjust, he is indignant, he declares that he will show them.  The person in a red crisis usually appears tense, ready to strike out, about to explode.  In other red crises, the individual may appear to be calm, but we can pick up the anger, frustration, and hurt from things he says, the way he describes situations, the kinds of things he is thinking about doing.  The individual may be clenching his fists or pounding on the arm of his chair.  You may notice that he is gritting his teeth or talking in a very angry, cutting tone.  Frequently, such a person sets off fearful feelings in us, and we find ourselves worried about the possibility that he might hurt someone or something.  For example, the parents of a young girl are divorced, and the girl is very upset.  She tells us, I called Daddy.  That woman answered the phone and said Daddy had taken her little girl swimming.  I hope she drowns.  I don’t ever want to see him again.  I hope he drowns, too.  I hate him!  [The little girl jams a pencil into the arm of her chair.]  I don’t care.  I don’t need a daddy, anyway.

The now potential of a red crisis is that the individual may act out his anger, really hurt someone else.  This now potential combines with the act that the extreme anger disables the individual and makes the self-resolution factor quite low.  In a red crisis then, our goal will be to reduce the now potential by softening the anger and allowing the individual to talk it out enough to begin to look at this feelings and at alternative ways of dealing with them.  As he begins to think and feel with us, the self-resolution factor will increase. …

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Crisis always has a mood or color.  The psychiatric literature frequently refers to this dimension of people in crisis as affect.  In crisis communication, color refers to the mood or disposition of the individual in crisis.  Does he seem depressed, angry, agitated, anxious, fearful; how would you describe the individual’s mood?  Using colors is a convenient way for us to communicate information about an individual’s mood or affect and to describe and understand the three major or most observable moods or affective states.

It may be helpful to think about several people in different situations.  As an exercise, think about these individuals.  What kind of mood are they in?  Using a word or short phrase to describe each person’s mood, think about whether they seem happy or sad, angry or loving, tired or energetic, optimistic or pessimistic, and so on.  Crisis communication is unlike most other forms of communication.  Developing a knack for describing an individual’s mood or tone in a word or short phrase will help in recognizing and understanding this dimension of crisis situations. …

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Crisis communication starts with an understanding of the communication loop.  An individual in crisis has confused and somewhat conflicting feelings, ideas thoughts, and emotions.  It is this confusion and conflict that motivates him to come to a crisis intervention service.  Through crisis communication, he is able to translate these feelings, emotions, ideas, and so on, into verbal and nonverbal messages.  Gradually, he is able to organize and express these messages in a way that leads him to understand his situation.  Crisis communication helps him modify and clarify these messages and serves as an emotional filter through which intense and uncomfortable feelings can pass.  This modification, clarification, and filtering gradually move the individual to a point where he can deal with his situation.  Crisis communication is a special and limited form of communication and represents a systematic way to make thinking, planning, and feeling skills available to the individual, thus supporting and supplementing his own capacities and abilities.  It is this understanding and special use of the communication loop that allow crisis communication to help people in crisis when other forms of communication do not.

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Perhaps it will be helpful to think about crisis communication in terms of its differences from and its similarities to more typical conversations in which communication is sequential.  You make a comment or observation, express a feeling, or send some other type of message to me.  I receive your message and add some ideas and feelings of my own.  I then send you a message related to what you said but include my own ideas and feelings.  You receive my message and add some ideas and feelings of your own.  The process goes back and forth with our individual ideas and feelings being added.  Over a period of time then, we may have talked about many different things, expressed a lot of different views and ideas, and ended up with something that had no apparent relationship to what we started talking about.  We have moved, sequentially, from one thing to another, and our communication drifts.  In crisis communication however, focus starts and remains with the individual and his crisis.

As we think about the communication loop, an example may help to illustrate differences between ordinary conversation, on the one hand, and crisis communication, on the other.  Recall Dick’s predicament with his supposedly unfaithful wife.  First, consider how a conversation might go between Dick and a friend. …

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The communication loop also operates at a somewhat different level, involving our becoming a part of the individual’s own communication process.  We serve as a rational, objective, feeling, caring sounding board for his feelings and ideas and as an emotional filter through which his feelings and ideas can pass.  Hopefully, this filtering will make his feelings and emotions more manageable and less disruptive and result in a lower likelihood of eruption and possibly destructive outcomes.

In Chapters 7 and 9, this process of working with the feelings and emotions of people in crisis will receive detailed attention.  The notion of filtering feelings though, is basic to dealing with crisis situations.  Think about the fact that it takes at least two people to have an argument.  Someone is extremely upset and angry with you.  He is accusing you of being irresponsible and of making a mess of things.  Your natural temptation is to become defensive, try to explain your behavior, attempt to reason with him, and as a last resort to attack him, accusing him of being insensitive and unreasonable—and, anyway, the difficulty is probably his fault.  Suppose that the problem was that you were eating popcorn in the living room and had made a mess.  Your wife discovers the mess and accuses you of being irresponsible, setting a bad example for the children, making more work for her, and really not caring about her feelings and how hard she works.  Obviously, she has had a bad day, and your making a mess was the final straw.  Instead of becoming defensive and trying to justify your behavior, you say, I’m really sorry about making a mess.  I am sorry that I have made you so angry with me.  I can tell you’re really mad about this, and I don’t blame you.  You would never say that?  Why not?  When people attack us, we are supposed to defend ourselves.  Anyway, she is making a big deal over nothing.  What do you think her reaction would be if, instead of getting angry or defending yourself, you simply absorb her anger and tell her that you are sorry?  She will probably be at least less angry than she was initially.  You have managed to keep the conversation focused on the problem—the popcorn in the living room.  As the two of you think about the problem, she will probably calm down, and both of you, for example, could clean up the mess.  You have avoided a serious argument, and had that argument followed the pattern of most blowups, you have avoided getting into other problems.  Arguments tend to start over something minor and then move from topic to topic.  It is common for people to report that they had a huge argument, but they are not able to remember what it started over.  In the case of the popcorn, you have filtered the intense feeling out of the conversation.  This enabled you to focus on the real problem: the fact that your wife was upset about having to deal with one more mess.

Just as you were able to filter the anger out of the conversation, you can filter the feelings of people in crisis.  To do this, you start by acknowledging the feeling.  You let the person know you understand why he or she is upset, angry, afraid, confused, depressed, sad, and so on.  In many ways, this requires a somewhat unnatural emotional response on your part.  We usually reflect the feelings of other people.  If someone is angry, we become angry; if he is afraid, we become apprehensive, if he is sad, we become sad.  In crisis intervention, we avoid reflecting the feelings of the individual in crisis, that is, we do not feel like he feels.  Instead, we attempt to absorb or filter their feelings.  This lets them get past the intense emotion and lets them think with us about the problem and about possible solutions.

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For individuals in crisis, crisis communication must lead to modification and clarification of their feelings, emotions, and ideas, thereby enabling them to better deal with their present situation.  For example, if a teenage boy becomes very angry with someone who made a pass at his girl friend and is fighting the impulse to get revenge, crisis communication should modify and defuse his anger while, at the same time, helping to clarify the implications of seeking revenge.  If a young child has had a very traumatic experience and is withdrawing and turning his feelings in on himself, crisis communication should help him modify his feelings somewhat and enable him to talk them out.

In any crisis situation in which our intervention hypothesis directs us to focus on the individual, our goal is to help him modify, clarify, and cope with his feelings and thoughts.  Our skill in and knowledge about dealing with feelings and thoughts need to be made available to the individual for his use in understanding and coping with his own thoughts and feelings.  Before we became involved, he was dealing with his feelings and thoughts through his own internal communication process.  It is then, our goal to become a part of that internal communication process by letting him use us to supplement and support his own communication skills and capacities. …

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Figure 5 finds the individual in another crisis, but this time he has the good fortune to be in the communication loop with you.  You are skilled at crisis communication and are focusing your intervention hypothesis on the need to help the individual slow down, and plan ahead.

In crisis communication, there is a communication loop in which messages, ideas, feelings, and so on, are sent out by the individual in crisis, picked up by you, and returned to the individual in a slightly modified and clarified form.  Understanding this communication loop and the techniques involved in modifying and clarifying these messages, ideas, and feelings represents an important and valuable skill when working with people in crisis.

First, we need to consider the interactive nature of communication and of helping relationships.  At an abstract level, a person in crisis is internally experiencing various and sometimes conflicting feelings, emotions, impulses, urges, and so on.  Within the individual then, is a confusing and possibly disturbing mix of things that contributes to his feelings of uneasiness and crisis.

Second, we want to help him feel better and become better able to deal with his situation.  Within us are a variety of skills and ideas, including a knowledge of the crisis intervention process.  Somehow, the individual needs to communicate what is going on within him.  At the same time, and this must be emphasized, we need to make our knowledge and skills available to him.

Somehow, the individual in crisis needs to translate his feelings, emotions, ideas, and so on into messages and convey those messages to us.  We will, in turn, need to decode the messages, interpret them in light of our knowledge and skills, and respond to the individual.  He will then take in our response and send us another message.  This interaction process of messages and responses may be verbal or nonverbal.  Nonverbal communication is probably familiar to all of us.  We get and give messages by touching, by the way we look or act, through gestures and posture, and so on.  Whether the messages and responses are verbal or nonverbal however, the purpose of the communication loop in crisis intervention is crisis reduction. …

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The crisis intervention process proceeds on multiple levels.  For those with little understanding of crisis and crisis intervention, the process appears to be relatively easy and sounds a lot like common sense.  It has been said though, that common sense represents the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and skillful intervention is not nearly so easy and casual as it might appear.  When someone asks my kids what their daddy does, they usually reply that he just talks to people.  Their daddy has more fancy names for it: counseling, psychotherapy, play therapy, and even crisis intervention.  Nonetheless, the kids are right.  In crisis intervention, most of what we do is just talking to people.  At least, that is what it looks like to an observer.  As we shall see though, our talking to people is but one level of what is really going on in the process.  We are helping the individual develop and maintain crisis focus.  We are coming to an understanding of the precipitating event while developing judgment about the now potential and the self-resolution factor.  We are developing a crisis definition and formulating intervention hypotheses.  Throughout the process, we are evaluating our intervention and are being alert to potential cumulative effects and other unseen effects.  We are actively involved with the individual in the process.  Activities at this level tend to have a thinking/doing quality.  At another level, we are carefully and caringly listening to the individual’s communication to us.  We hear him, we are trying to understand, and we want him to know we care.  The understanding that comes through listening is however, not passive.  We are actively involved with the individual, affecting and being affected by him, and intentionally and intently working toward his being able to deal with his difficulties.  As we talk about crisis communication then, we will see that our talk is really not just talk.  It is a special kind of communication that requires sensitivity, self-awareness, compassion, and concern for the individual and honest empathy with his crisis involvement.

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