Originally posted 2018-09-30 18:11:24.
Guest post by Jack Billington
When you think about preparedness in case of a crisis you mostly think about material preparedness. First you freak out thinking about all the things your bug out bag is missing. You start making lists with the most important items you should have around you. You start building stuff; you start training in order to gain physical strength. However, don’t forget your mental preparation. Do you know how do you react in a crisis?
If you’re reading this article it means you’ve already created in your head the worst case scenario you should prepare for. Now, we all hope for the best while preparing for the worst so I’m guessing, even though you thought about all the items and all the right solutions for your scenario, you didn’t think if you’re mentally prepared for a disaster.
Unfortunately, there are no 5 or 10 or even 20 steps to take in order to remain calm during a crisis. The trick is that you read all the right books, all the right articles and you think you have it all figured out. You think you’ll remember how you should act. The bad news is, when facing a situation you haven’t faced before, when facing danger, you never know how you’ll act. You behavior is the result of multiple variables in your environment. Most of the times you act based on impulse. Your emotions set the tone and you find yourself doing things you never thought you were capable of.
Having said all that, you might think well what’s the point in reading all this if I’m going to act the same either way? Well, don’t be so quick to put barriers on yourself. There are in fact things that you can do in order to improve the way you’ll handle a possible crisis, but it takes time, patience and most importantly a lot of will.
Before starting to read about the different ways people react to a crisis, before identifying traits in your behavior similar to those in psychology books, start observing things from within. See, the more you read, the more you’ll feel like identifying yourself with what you are reading, even though it may not be right. Behavioral patterns are based on researches. Of course, multiple individuals have experienced the same emotions and have expressed the same behavior when facing given stimulus, but it won’t always be black and white, they won’t always apply to every individual spot on.
You may not know all the terms for the things you are feeling, you may not interpret everything right, but first of all take the time to acknowledge everything that goes on with you. Start with the most basic situations, from watching a movie, spending time alone vs. spending time with your family, going to work, coming home from work, doing the things you like, going to sleep on a week-day vs. going to sleep on week-ends, cooking, working out, etc. Look for the small changes that you wouldn’t normally perceive: physical stuff – heart beat rate, breath, tiredness level, nausea, etc. but also mental stuff- over thinking, irrational fears, sadness, numbness, etc. Once you become aware of them, your mind will be able to draw some patterns: you’ll recognize the same emotion appear in 2 different situations and will be able to determine what triggered it.
So here is your first and most important step in controlling a crisis: get to know yourself. Try doing the following exercise for at least two weeks. You will find it difficult the first 2 days as you will identify so many triggers and so many emotions that you may not know how to categorize, but don’t give up. At the end of the 2 weeks you will find yourself with a much better understanding of your own behavior.
The key is to write down key words describing the situation you’ve been through and the way it made you feel. Write them down as soon as you can. What matters is how you feel in that exact same time, not 2 hours later when you had time to cool down and assess the situation.
Use a little notebook or better yet a notebook in your phone (as it will be less obvious to others if you start typing something in your phone). Don’t make a journal out of it but don’t skip any event, even if it seems meaningless at that time. Make a new entry every day.
Ex: Monday morning – woke up –sleepy, hungry; drove to work – grumpy, angry, moody, eager … and so on.
At the end of the 2 weeks start looking for patterns, count the emotions that have repeated themselves and see what you make of them. You don’t need professional help in order to realize the emotions that rule your life. Now that you have identified them, go back to the moments when they appeared and look for similarities. You may find things that don’t surprise you, for example that being hungry makes you grumpy or things that do surprise you, like noticing you have never written the word hungry in all this time.
After identifying your triggers, the key is to get out the negative things of your list. Slowly try to see what you can change the next time you find yourself in similar situations. If you cannot eliminate the triggers, at least try to control the way you feel about it. At this point when you identify a situation (ex: feeling hungry) you know you’ll most likely get grumpy, which will have impact on your other interactions. Instead of allowing that feeling to settle in, try changing it either by correcting the situation (go get something to eat), either by tricking your mind into associating the situation with a positive feeling (anxious to getting something to eat in the future).
Now bear in mind this is the simplest example I could think of. In the course of 2 weeks you will encounter much more complex emotions and it will be more difficult to deal with them. But this is exactly the key to getting to know yourself and the way you react: exercise. When you start working out, you don’t expect results after the first 20 squats. It goes the same way with your mind. Start working out now in order to be prepared in the future.
Author’s bio: Jack is a former officer. Now, he works as a home & personal security expert. Also, time after time, he conducts shooting classes. He has 15 years of professional experience in home security improvement. On his blog, he write articles on home & personal safety, guns & gun safe accessories, emergency preparedness, etc.
