Why A Crisis Can Bring Out The Best In Us

The word crisis comes from the Greek verb “krino” , which means “I judge and choose”. This concept suggests a choice or moment where we must meet different perspectives and opportunities ( Onnis, 1900) . We can consider a crisis as a process of natural homeostasis between a person and their environment. We achieve a balance by “changing the weights in our scales” or by connecting our frames. This can therefore offer us the opportunity to produce changes that provide new forms of adaptation.

What separates the functionality of a person or a family is not the lack of crises, but how they have been handled. We can also look at how these crises have contributed to personal and family growth and development. They are also events that, due to their nature or when they occur, can simply be too much for us and cause harm to us.

Types of human crises

Throughout life, each person must face a series of critical moments that we can classify in different ways. In general, we can classify these critical moments into two types:

• Normative (Expected): These are specific to the normal life cycle and expected (marriage, look for job or house, pension, etc.)
• Non-normative (Unexpected): These refer to random, unpredictable, unintended and unexpected crises, caused by one or more events. As these events occur suddenly, they require an immediate response.

So a person’s or family’s crisis may or may not be predictable, but they all have one thing in common. The problem that has caused them is very difficult to solve. When it comes to mental health, the outcome of a given crisis is the same, but the personal experience varies.

What is crucial for a crisis?

We are not isolated people who have personal crises in our own closed bubble. We can group the factors that determine the development of these crises into three types:

• The severity of the events that caused the crisis.
• Family resources: flexible roles, socio-economic and functional characteristics, care, emotional support…
• Social support: family, friends, the community or others who can help minimize harmful effects.

There are different theories that try to explain these crises by using different focus points. They are: The theory of vital events, The cognitive theory, The theory of dealing with mechanisms and The theory of reactivation of previous events. Novack (1978, quoted by Slaikeu, 1996) suggests that the probability of an event producing a crisis depends on a number of factors. These include the moment it occurs, its intensity, its duration and the degree to which it interferes with a person’s development.

Humans: a resilient species

Mankind seems to have been constantly trying to recover from incessant wars, massive crises, disasters and violence since the beginning of time. Crises make their mark and are passed down from generation to generation. They also have a lasting effect on our minds and emotions.

Why are some people who experience a crisis not as severely affected as others are? The cause is related to one of the biggest problems in mental health: their chronicity . In other words, the repetition of critical events in one’s life, as well as the fact that they have few resources to deal with them.

Every crisis is a message for our lives

Everyone who experiences a crisis receives a message for their lives. The message may or may not be processed consciously, but it becomes part of the “manuscript” of a person’s life. Caplan wrote about his interest in what happens to the person in the first three days of the crisis. He looked at how this combined with the description of the crisis and how it affected their cognitive function. Dyregrov also wrote on this topic. He realized that the combination of these elements may explain the variation in different people’s adaptation mechanisms.

How we assimilate the impression of these critical moments is finally projected into the “script” of the future for our lives. It is impossible to escape from what we feel and what these events mean to us. Later, however, we can change these impressions with new, more positive messages.

The different ways in which the basic needs of a person are present after these crises make it difficult to build a generalized negative script. It is also important to consider the conclusion that this person has reached regarding a given crisis. When someone has a crisis, we should not think of them as victims. The “victims” of these crises had to deal with these events and move on with their lives. We are not talking about victims. However, we are talking about large survivors.