Emotional crisis and management: Skills training from Psychologists in Melbourne
Emotional crises happen to all of us. Some people may experience these more often than others. The meaning of crisis can also sometimes be misunderstood, contributing to missed opportunities to intervene appropriately.
What is an emotional crisis?
There are many definitions of emotional crisis. In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), a crisis occurs when you are experiencing a highly stressful situation where you experience intense emotions and / or emotional pain. A crisis usually meets the following criteria:
Extremely stressful and triggers intense emotional pain or responses. Sometimes this could be accompanied by intense physical reactions, such as breathlessness, light headedness, nausea etc.
A crisis is short term. It is an acute phenomenon, and it doesn’t last more than a day. A crisis should not be an ongoing and persistent state that one is in.
Extreme urge and pressure to eliminate the feelings or problem solve. This sometimes could mean that one may act impulsively, or engage in unhelpful or harmful behaviours to reduce the problem or emotional pain.
It is common for us to confuse intense emotional reactions with emotional crisis, as emotions ARE painful. It is helpful to be able to identify and differentiate a crisis from an ongoing emotionally dysregulated state. A crisis requires more immediate management and intervention, whereas for an ongoing state of emotional disturbance, some everyday emotional regulation skills is required.
One reminder is that emotions and crisis is a subjective experience. Not everyone would experience the intensity of emotions the same way, thus the need and ways for intervention may also varies. It is important to validate and make space for your experience.
Psychological skills
When addressing an emotional crisis, DBT provides some valuable skills that are quick to access and readily applicable to mitigate the crisis. In DBT, these crisis survival skills are called “Distress Tolerance”. There are several Distress Tolerance skills, and the followings are some examples.
The goal of Distress Tolerance skills is to tolerate and accept the pain. They are often not used to eliminate the immediate problem. These skills are to help us survive and get through these extremely challenging situations and emotional responses, without engaging in harmful behaviours, or making the situations worse.
One simple skill that is easy to remember is the STOP skill. We find that it is helpful to introduce this skill early on when we start practising Distress Tolerance as they are the foundation of many other sets of skills. STOP are acronyms of the following steps.
S = Stop. This means we would like to literally freeze. When we feel that our emotions are overwhelming and taking over, it is common for us to react rather than respond. When we freeze and stop our actions, it helps us to stay in control of our behaviours, and allow us time and emotional space to think through our responses. Name the emotions and the situations if you can, otherwise, stop and freeze.
T = Take a Step Back so that you have some cognitive and emotional space to understand this challenging situation. Take a deep breath. This helps us to take our time to make an informed decision of how to respond to the circumstance and / or manage our emotions, without acting impulsively.
O = Observe our surroundings and our internal state. Pay attention to our physical sensations, our thoughts, our emotions, without judgement. It is also helpful to ground ourselves by observing the environment and focus on our 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. This is an important skill that reduce the likelihood of us feeling so overwhelmed that we may dissociate or disconnect from ourselves or the present moment.
P = Proceed mindfully by making a thoughtful decision of the most effective response and action. Try to focus on what is helpful and effective in the long run, and what is consistent with your values and who you want to be. Focus on reducing harm, rather than eliminating emotional pain in the short term.
Role of a Psychologist
It is understandable that the above would be challenging in a highly stressful situation, especially when demands are high and conflictual. One of the roles of a psychologist to help us work on identifying the occurrence of a crisis, as well as the barriers and application of Distress Tolerance skills.
If you are interested to learn more, please feel free to contact our Client Support Team to be connected with a suitable Psychologist in Melbourne.
If you need urgent help for crisis support, please call 000 or visit this page for more information.