Many people have difficulties with crisis, especial personal crisis, because a crisis pulls you out of your comfort-zone and changes your life instantly. So how can you stay relaxed in such a situation? I invite you to consider that you can navigate much easier through a crisis when you take into account the following 3 aspects.
- Stay centered in the here and now
- Distinguish clearly between emotions and feelings
- Change your point of view by taking radical responsibility
What is all this about in detail?
1. Stay centered in the here and now.
During a crisis it is essential that you have your power. However, many people give away their power to the outside, e. g. to the circumstances or another person. Some give their power away to the past, by wishing that everything gets back to the old state, or they give away their power to the future, by being constantly worried and thinking about what is going to happen or how their life should continue. Whatever it is that you focus on in the outside, the result is that you give away your so called energetic center, i. e. your person power and authority. Then you are no longer centered and grounded. When you are centered it may also happen that you get lost in hectic action or search desperately for solutions in your intellect.
However, to be really effective and flexible in times of crisis, it is essential that you are present in the here and now. Only then can you become calm and clearly sense what e. g. the next thing to do is or when it is time to do nothing. When you are centered and grounded, nothing can devastate you.
How can you get present in the here and now?
Experiment No. 1: Getting into your body
You can learn to use your attention to locate your energetic center (many people have it in their head, because they think the whole day long) and then use your intention to put it on your physical center (the physical balance point of your body). You can get a first taste of this, when you first of all fully get into your body, by closing the eyes and breathing calmly several times. Then sink deeper and deeper into your body and find the place inside of you, where your inner fire of life is burning, your essence. As soon as you have found this place, stay there and look around. Which color does it have? Do you see the fire of life or a sparkling jewel? Approach the fire or the jewel and touch it with your hands. Sense it. This is the place, where everything is all right. The place where you are meant exactly the way you are. Stay there for some more minutes and then open your eyes again. Can you sense the difference?
2. Distinguish Feelings from Emotions
What often happens during times of crisis is in addition that a tremendous amount of emotions cooks up. When you identify with these emotions, the only thing you can usually do is reacting irresponsibly in an emotional way instead of acting consciously and responsibly. It is therefore crucial that you become aware of the difference between emotions and feelings.
There are 4 huge feelings territories: anger, sadness, fear and joy. Feelings arise in here and now. As soon as you use them consciously and responsibly (e. g. to set a boundary or to consciously let go of something), they disappear.
Emotions feel the same like feelings, however they last longer. Have you ever experienced that you talked to a person and after some hours or days you still felt angry, sad or scared? Well, most of us have experienced this. If this happens, then an emotion was triggered in you, which has nothing to do with the person you talked to or the corresponding situation. One of your “red buttons” has been pressed. What happens then is that the emotion comes out of the blue with an incredible impact and you react emotionally. Maybe even evil words or sentence are in the space.
There are different kinds of emotions:
- On the one hand there is the so called child emotion:
These are incomplete feelings from the past, e. g. from childhood. Maybe you experienced a similar situation back then and it was not safe for you to express these feelings. During a crisis such child emotions can easily come to the surface again. One possibility to heal them is to consciously express the feelings in a safe space and in presence of a trained person, so that the feelings can be completed.
- On the other hand there is the so called parent emotion:
These are feelings you have unconsciously taken over from others, e. g. parents, teachers, institutions, brands, religions, etc. If for example you react with panic in a certain situation, because your mother used to react with panic, then this is a parent emotion.
- The third emotion is a special one, let’s call it the Gremlin emotion.
The Gremlin emotion belongs to your little, inner monster, your shadow part, the king or queen of your own underworld. Have you for example ever woken up in the morning and you were angry for no reason and felt like arguing with the next person crossing your way? This exactly is a Gremlin emotion. The Gremlin simply is in the mood to start a so called low drama. We get to this in a minute.
A sign for an emotion is also that you mix feelings and feel for example depressed, desperate, helpless, melancholic or hysteric. If feelings are mixed in such a way, then you are stuck and cannot act in a clear and responsible way.
So how can you stop to react emotionally?
Experiment No. 2: Make the gap
As soon as you realize that a huge bunch of emotions is rising inside of you and you would love to argue and react immediately out of this emotion, then make the gap. This means that you keep breathing at least 3 times and become aware that it is an emotion coming up that has most likely nothing to do with the current situation or the person across from you. If you do not make a gap, the automatic impulse is to project the old emotion on the current situation or the person, which often results in stress or fight.
Even though you might only notice later that you are still angry, sad or afraid or mix the feelings, it is essential that you consciously say to yourself „Ah…this is an emotion. It has nothing to do with him/her or the situation.” Then you can put the emotion aside and look at it or heal it later instead of projecting it on the current situation or the other person.
3. Change your perspective by taking radical responsibility
If you do not know the difference between emotions and feelings then you identify with your emotions thinking that you feel a feeling. However, the only thing that happens with such an emotional reaction is that you end up straight away in the so called low drama, i. e. a persecutor-rescuer-victim dynamic starts. Then you are probably the victim, which whines, complains, blames others, makes others wrong, shoots around with accusations, wants to be right or wants unspoken expectations to be fulfilled. In the swamp of low drama you are stuck and circle around yourself telling yourself the story that the situation or the other persons are unfair, have done you wrong or what so ever.
Being the victim of circumstances has a great benefit: You don’t have to take responsibility, don’t have to change, get attention, can keep telling yourself the story that you are morally the better one and can most of all…..take revenge sooner or later. The Gremlin, your shadow part loves this game.
So how can you escape the low drama?
Experiment No. 3: Tell the responsible story
A really big experiment would be that you start telling the responsible story. The shadow part inside of you won’t like this, because by doing so, you will give up your victim position and thus the possibility to shift to the persecutor role and take revenge.
This experiment is about changing your inner attitude and taking radical responsibility by answering 2 questions:
- How did you arrange that this happened (i. e. that you are experiencing the crisis)?
What is your benefit?
This is not an easy exercise. Do it anyway.
Maybe you arranged it in the way that you have chosen a specific environment, a partner or something else. Maybe you wanted to be right or did not communicate expectations. You might also have overseen the first signs of a personal crisis coming, have not taken them seriously and ignored them.
Your benefit might be that you could stay the victim in the past, did not have to take responsibility and everything could stay the same. Maybe another benefit was that it was just comfortable to keep playing the victim to not be in your full power. Maybe one benefit of the crisis is right now that you can free yourself from old, limiting believes or take a stand for yourself.
It is not about being guilty of something. It is about changing your perspective, your inner attitude. Try to be really radically responsible. Perceive how your inner attitude changes and how the responsible perspective gives you more power. When you take responsibility you can no longer be a victim of circumstances.
When you take the responsible perspective here and now then a completely new game can start and suddenly completely new possibilities open up.
Below you find once again a summary of the different ways of navigating through crisis:
Navigating crisis in an ordinary way |
Navigating crisis in a different way |
Giving away your power to the circumstances |
Staying centered |
Being focused on the past or the future |
Being present in the here and now |
Trying to find solutions in the intellect |
Trusting your impulses and your intuition |
Reacting and doing something |
You are more in the being mode and move when it is time |
Reacting emotionally Being identified with the emotions
|
Differentiate between emotions and feelings. Making the gap and not getting overwhelmed by emotions
|
Getting stuck in low drama, whining, blaming, complaining, etc. |
Changing perspectives and taking radical responsibility for your crisis
|
Your Gremlin is off the leash and playing his Gremlin game |
You have your Gremlin on the leash |
Being stuck and immovable |
Being creative and generating new possibilities |
Trying to survive and not changing anything |
Using the crisis as a chance for healing and inner growth |
Trying to distract yourself |
Perceiving what is without distraction |
I wish you smooth navigating through times of crisis.
Best wishes,
Nicola