What Brave People Do in a Crisis
The Five Most Important Things Brave People Do in a Crisis By Cindy Finch, LCSW
1. Lean on More Than One Person – spread the needs around
When we encounter a crisis it’s important to save our closest friends and family for the big stuff like emotional support, decision making and personal family needs. But if you have friends, co-workers and neighbors who also want to help but you’re not that close to them, ask them to lend support on the small stuff. When we’re facing hard times we all need help with the little, everyday things like running errands, housekeeping and cooking meals. If someone near you has asked what kind of help you need as you move through your time of crisis, have two lists ready: The A List and The B List.
The A-list is for those closest to you (best friends, dear family members, trusted leaders) and it includes a few very important things like: child or pet care, help with finances and supportive guidance and decision-making. Not just anyone should care for your kids or look at your financial situation when you fall on hard times. Only people in your closest circle should help with these things. Your B-List includes everything else. This is the list you hand to anyone when they call or text to share their condolences or support and say “Please let me know how I can help.” Yes, they can help! This list includes things like running errands, grocery shopping, meal prep, clean up in the yard or around the house, and other lesser (but still important tasks) that need to be done. Share the list with them and thank them for their offer.
As people, we like to help each other when times are hard. Don’t deny your tribe the satisfaction and happiness that comes from pulling together and lending a hand when the chips are down. When they go through their own rough waters, you can step in to help them, too. I know it is much harder to be “the helped” than to be “the helper” right now. Most of us prefer to offer assistance than to be in need of it. But bravery means having to do some things we don’t like in order to reach a bigger goal. The goal is for you and your loved ones to get through this very difficult time the best that you can. Brave people know who is on their A List and on their B List and lean into each of them accordingly.
2. Stop holding on to THE LIST - let people off the hook
When we face hard times, it’s not unusual to feel exposed and vulnerable. People around us might be well-meaning but miss the mark (so to speak) and might say and do the wrong things (or NOT say and NOT do the right things) and it lodges in us like a personal attack. The longtime friend who didn’t call during your crisis, the family member who avoided you at the reunion after your divorce, the new parents who gloated on their baby right in front of you when they knew you lost a child…it all adds up. And it hurts. But rather than keeping a Bitter List of wrongs that have been done to you, consider re-directing the resentful energy into RECOVERY energy. Brave people who are doing hard things by going through difficult times learn how to limit the amount of time their minds spin on payback scenarios and angry conversations in their heads. Instead, try this: Rehearse scenes in your mind where you are getting back on your feet, taking your life back from the loss and helping others like you do the same thing. Changing the channels on your thought-life will do wonders for your energy and also tells your mind you’ve settled the fight, you’re not a victim anymore, and YOU WIN.
3. Stop the Denial – radical acceptance
When it seems like everything is going from bad to worse in life, it can be hard to find our way through the mounting problems. We may get fired, disease might rip across our lives, our spouse might leave us, someone we care about may be killed in a car accident, or the test results might come back with terrible news. Whatever the catastrophe is, it is tempting to act like it’s not real or be so angry at someone else that we never really experience the pain of our situation. By dodging the truth of what’s happening we might fall prey to further pain. You can tell this is happening when divorcing partners drag out a legal battle for months or years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars talking and fighting through attorneys. Or when a person dies and their family starts suing anyone and everyone who was near the incident – whether they were at fault or not. Or when people have a traumatic life event and then they drink heavily every night, for months on end, rather than face into what’s happening, these are all signs that patterns of denial are in place. And while there’s no problem with a healthy dose of denial to get through tough times, it becomes a problem when it starts causing other problems.
Radical Acceptance, the process of accepting things as they really are and not as I wish they were, is the remedy for moving out of denial and into problem solving. Radical Acceptance is not agreeing with the problem, saying anyone else is right or giving permission for what just happened to happen again. It just means we stop arguing with reality and accept what is…and then begin to move into problem solving rather than staying stuck in blame. People who are learning to be brave move out of a victim mentality, stop the blaming, and start solving the problem instead.
4. Give Permission – to yourself, to grieve
Once we have begun to accept what the truth of our situation really is, it’s important to allow ourselves to grieve what we lost. Oftentimes, encountering a dark night of the soul through loss and pain, means what we had hoped for is not going to happen. Whether this happens when our marriage ends, a loved one dies, a job is lost, we have a miscarriage, we run out of money or any number of adverse life events occur, what we thought life was going to be like didn’t work out. When DEATH of the DREAM occurs, many people want to rush through this phase and just “fix” it or move on and get busy with something else. But months later they may fall into a deep depression, engage in behaviors they’re not proud of, or start to repeat previous ineffective life patterns (addiction, debt, isolation, revenge) that they thought they were done with. What’s often missing in these cases is taking the time to properly grieve the initial loss, learn the lessons of the loss, and then make the needed adjustments in life that go with the loss.
For instance, when couple’s divorce, oftentimes one or both partners begin dating before the divorce is even final. While most people are quite lonely going through a divorce, if they do not step back and take stock of the entire marriage, what part they themselves played in the breakup, fix those parts of self, and then shore up their internal resources to cope with life after a breakup, they are destined to attract the same type of spouse (or worse) then they just divorced. In the wake of divorce, most people are older, have kids to think about, less money after all the legal fees and low energy reserves with which to start a new life. Work smarter, not harder after you go through a loss. Take some time to mourn what you’ve just been through.
When loss and grief are properly expressed they produce healing and growth in us. As the sadness moves through and cleans us out, it actually opens up a new, spacious place within us. Once we grieve we can begin to grow from this space, awakened, self-aware, wiser and ready for the next chapters of our life.
5. Tap into Your Strengths – faith, music, art, pets and mindfulness
When we are treading through life’s sewers it becomes necessary to tap into deeper resources. Our typical helpers like friends, Facebook and Netflix might not hold the cure for us when times are hard. People who are learning to be brave, are the ones who develop resilience and bounce back from hard times more quickly than others. To do this, they learn to fill their own cup with things that really hold water. A deep dive into your faith traditions, creating a soulful soundtrack, taking up an art medium that helps you express your struggle and learning to be in “just this one moment” (aka mindfulness) can all steady your soul through this dark time. What’s more, these things can take on a life of their own and help you bounce back when you’re ready. (Also…these strengths reflect your level of resilience. Want to know how resilient you are? Take my assessment here).
A playlist of your current favorite songs can fill in the hours of your day, especially at night
Your art project can keep growing as you add new layers of your story to it
A new pet can add another “heartbeat” to your home and curb the loneliness of loss
A mindful garden can busy you as you pull weeds and tend to new growth
Practicing your faith and trusting God can hold you tight when nights are long and sleep is low
Resilience and strength will begin to anchor you as you deepen your connections to yourself and your spirit by tapping into these practices.
You are braver then you think, keep going!
-Cindy
About Cindy: Cindy Finch, LCSW is a clinical therapist, writer and professor who trained at Mayo Clinic. She works closely with those in the margins and is a survivor of an undiagnosed disease that turned out to be cancer while she was pregnant. Treatments for her cancer led to heart, liver and lung failure which she survived. She now lives in Orange County, CA and enjoys her life with her husband Darin and their three children.
