Basic to an understanding of the individual in relationship to crisis is the recognition that physical development and physical health are important to everyone at every stage of the developmental process.  From birth to about the age of three, children are primarily concerned with physical development.  They learn how to sit, walk, talk, use the bathroom, feed themselves, manipulate objects, run, climb, and do all the things they will need to do as they grow and mature.  For people of all ages, physical skills, abilities, capacities, needs, and so on, are very important to their sense of who they are and to their ability to cope with their life situation.  We can see then, that whenever an individual is experiencing some physical difficulty he also will have problems in coping with his responsibilities and opportunities.  This difficulty in coping may at times be more than the individual can handle.  For example, children with serious physical difficulties may become overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and helplessness when they are unable to participate in normal activities, do the kinds of things other children do, be accepted by other children as equals, and so on.  Adults may suddenly find themselves in a position where they are unable to work, unable to drive, unable to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities, unable to cope with simple routines like getting to the store, and generally feeling inadequate and useless.  Elderly people frequently become depressed and overwhelmed by their recent inability to hear, see, walk, and so on.  Throughout the life cycle, physical difficulties and health problems represent a serious liability and frequently contribute to social and emotional crises.

Similarly, emotional development is an important dimension.  An individual’s emotional makeup receives its primary developmental structure during the preschool years.  That is when children learn to love and hate, deal with feelings of anger and fear, express affection and excitement, and generally develop as feeling/emotional persons.  Young children first discover their feelings and then experiment with them.  Can I get people to do things by using my temper or by pouting?  How can I cope with things and situations that scare me?  What does it mean to love and be loved?  This discovery and experimentation continues throughout the life cycle.  Gradually, children learn to control and cope with their feelings and thus become able to prevent their feelings from taking over their behavior or getting in the way of their dealing with the world.  For everyone however, situations and circumstances do occur which cause them to react in emotional and uncontrolled ways.  In healthy individuals, this does not happen too often, and usually, it does not interfere with their over-all functioning.  For all of us though, our feelings and emotions sometimes become so overwhelming that they interfere with our thinking about and coping with our life situations.  Especially when those overwhelming feelings include fear and anger, we are in a crisis.  We find ourselves temporarily unable to deal with, understand, or otherwise cope with, this mix of emotions and feelings, and we are unable to respond rationally.  It is then, our ability to cope with and work through these feelings that enables us to resolve crises in our lives.  Further, it is our ability to help others cope with and work through such intense feelings in their lives that represents the focal task of crisis intervention. …

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