Crisis Survival Strategies: Dealing with Distress

1. Dealing with Distress

2. Introduction • Who is this material for • Exclusions -immediate risk -influence of substances

3. Crisis is an opportunity for change… • Identifying gaps is coping skills/maladaptive coping • Learning and implementing new skills • Integration requires practice practice practice

4. History is a good predictor of future behaviour • Recent history of crisis situations provides invaluable information about a person's emotional and behavioural reactions to crises

5. Relationship • Project Match • Attributes of relationship • Validation & empathy • Role plays

6. States of Mind Emotion Mind Wise Reasonable Mind

7. Reintroducing the Wave • Factors that lead to emotional distress • Why is knowing about the wave helpful?

8. Maladaptive Coping Strategies • Survival skills learnt early • Become habits • They work but…. • No longer useful as an adult

9. Dealing with Distress Strategies • Crisis survival strategies: • Distraction • Self soothing • Pros & cons • These strategies help us get through difficult feelings, to tolerate the things we can't immediately change • The objective is to find skills that work for you, to practice them until they are part of your everyday life and you can use the, whenever you need them

10. Distract brief respite from the distress • Activities: to get involved with and distract from distress i.e. Hobbies • Contributing: Takes you away from your pain and puts your attention on someone else i.e volunteer work etc • Comparisons: compare to someone doing the same as you or less well i.e compare yourself to others suffering • Opposite Emotions: read, watch or listen to things that have an emotion opposite to one you are feeling i.e if you are sad or angry watch comedy • Pushing Away: push away a distressing situation leaving it mentally • Build an Imaginary Wall: block the situation in your mind, each time it comes up tell it to go away or put some ugly in its place • Other Thoughts: effective in an emergency i.e counting to 10, stars • Other Sensations: strong stimulus can shake connection to pain i.e hold ice cube, rubber band on wrist, loud music, hot shower

11. Self Soothing Techniques: Be mindful of your senses • Vision: give all your attention to nature, art, flower etc • Hearing: give all your attention to beautiful soothing music, sounds of nature • Smell: Give all your attention to different smells around you i.e bread • Taste: give all your attention & mindfully taste i.e. Hot chocolate • Touch: Give all your attention to the feel

12. Pros & Cons of tolerating vs not tolerating distress NOT TOLERATING DISTRESS PROS CONS TOLERATING DISTRESS PROS CONS

13. Practice, integrate, automatic • Difficult to learn and new coping strategies • Requires practice practice practice • Objective is to identify what doesn't work as well as what does • Look at motivational techniques

14. New skills require practice Distress before 1 - 100 Distress after 1 - 100 Strategy

15. Managing a Crisis…. • Objectives: - To reduce emotional distress • To replace maladaptive strategies with effective coping strategies • To build competence in dealing with distress • Partnership • Collaborative • Recognising automatic use of established patterns of behaviour during a crisis • Crisis Management Plan

16. Crisis Management Plan • Document • Role of professional is to coach • Crisis management plan is living document that needs to be adopted through praxis

17. My Crisis Plan When I am in crisis and feel like , I will attempt a distraction strategy , and then a self soothe Skill . If I still feel in crisis I will then contact ,