Once we are sure that the individual has not neglected any important responsibilities or overlooked some important undesirable consequences of the present situation, we will help him think through possible ways of dealing with his present crisis.  With him, we have come to an understanding of what happened and of what is happening.  Now we will help him focus on what is likely to happen.  We are now beginning to make our planning skills available to him.  As he gradually begins to calm down, settle down, think things through, and plan ahead, we are nearing the end of the crisis intervention process.  The now potential is substantially reduced and the self-resolution factor is rapidly increasing.  Within the communication loop, we have effectively combined crisis color with crisis content and moved toward the goal of crisis reduction.

Ivan, age sixteen, has been telling us about a fairly complicated crisis.  He was initially very upset and felt as if everything was hopeless.  Using our understanding of communication color, we are able to get him to calm down and explain what happened.  In the last few days, things had gone from bad to worse.  He had a big fight with his girl friend, accusing her of being too friendly with another boy at school.  After thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that she is a vivacious, friendly young girl and that he is jealous of any attention she pays to other boys.  He sees that he had probably overreacted and that the fight was mostly his fault.  The problem is that she is not speaking to him now.  In addition, he flunked his English exam.  He blew up when the teacher handed him back his test paper, and she sent him down to the office.  The principal had really raked him over the coals for his belligerent attitude toward the teacher and had called his parents.  That started things at home, and he got into a huge argument with his father.  The result was that his father grounded him for a month, which means that he will not be able to go to his job after school and will not get paid next Friday.  He knows that his girl friend wants to go to the school dance next Saturday evening, but since he is not going to get paid, he will not have enough money to take her.  If all this were not enough, he stormed out of the house after the argument with his father, jumped into his car, tore out of the driveway, and ruined the transmission.  There’s no money to get that fixed, and he can’t use the car, anyway, since he is grounded.  The final straw came today when his mother learned from the mother of his best friend that Ivan had smoked some marijuana at a party two or three weeks ago.  Now she is down on him, threatening to take him to juvenile court.  It is all too much.  He feels like just taking off. …

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