Calm. The thing about emergencies is that they’re made even worse when people lose their cool and are too distraught to function well. We are human though, and it will happen to some of us. Knowing how to help someone get their distress under control might come in veeerrryyyy handy one of these days. Better yet, some of the techniques you can employ yourself if the stress level climbs to a point that it feels like it may take the top of your head off.
I’m passing along tips I got from a free, online course on Psychological First Aid I’m taking: https://learn.nctsn.org/course/index.php?categoryid=11
The program is administered by UCLA and Duke on behalf of the Dept of Health and Human Services, and is meant to train disaster responders. I’m finding it very useful, so I’d encourage you to do the course, which takes about six hours. In case you prefer just some choice tidbits, here you go.
Calm? Who needs it?
First, how do you know when somebody needs this kind of help (which the course calls ‘stabilization’)? After all, it’s quite normal to be distressed by disasters, loss of loved ones, etc. Some of the key questions are, Are their physical reactions under control? Are they staring, glassy-eyed? Unresponsive? Disoriented? Frantic? If so, they may need a little help to regain stability.
Frantic persons need to regain their equilibrium. *credit shown below
Don’t tell them to ‘Calm down!’
If you’re married, you’ve probably learned that one already. In fact, some people have learned that as, instead of magically calming, the subject of this sage advice tried to strangle them instead. Hey, if they could just will themselves calm, do you think they’d be freaking out or staring like a zombie?
Just don’t tell a distressed person to ‘just calm down’!
What works better
In general: Be calm, quiet, and present; and offer support. It never helps to look down on people (including kids) so get down to their eye level to talk to them.
Normalize their reactions. It is normal to respond strongly, especially as the strong emotions such as grief tend to come and go in waves. They may not know that (and wonder if they’re going crazy, or imagine it’s going to stay that awful); so tell them.
Breathing exercises are often useful. No, this is not just some hippie yoga thing. It’s physiology. You have feedback loops where your brain keeps track of your breathing. If you’re *breathing* like you’re relaxed, your brain will tend to initiate the autonomic nervous system in a way that literally makes you more relaxed, both physically and mentally.
The basic plan is to slow the breathing. Breath in slowly (no need to strain for a super-deep breath), hold for two beats, exhale slowly, hold for four beats, repeat. This is one you can do for yourself when you’re feeling overly stressed. (Or hey, you could try to tell yourself to just CALM DOWN! At least you’re not likely to strangle yourself over the bad advice.)
Sometimes people get stuck inside their own heads, re-living experiences no one really wants to re-live or running through the litany of their fears again and again. ‘Grounding’ is a way to help them to pull out of their own dark thoughts and reconnect to the world around them.
We ground electrical circuits to prevent wild, uncontrolled discharges….similar to why you might want to ground a distressed person.
Invite them to take a good slow breath, then describe to you five non-distressing things they can see. (Someone’s car flipped over by a tornado wouldn’t count as non-distressing, for example.) . Then another slow breath, and describe five non-distressing sounds they currently hear. One more breath, and tell about five things they physically feel that are non-distressing. The key to this is they have to get out of their own head and pay attention to their surroundings.
Calm Kids
For kids, it often works to have them take a slow breath, then tell you three things they see that are different colors, or to describe something they see of a color you name.
Standing by while someone is in deep distress and having no way to help is an awful feeling. Even if you don’t find it so, you might find begin in the company of such a person troublesome for other reasons. Everybody will be better off if we can help people regain their equilibrium. These simple approaches give you a useful way to help the distressed person regain their sensibility.
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