Do you tend to panic in a crisis?
The siren that went off in our community this past Friday night signaled that Hamas had fired a rocket in our direction and we should run to the bomb shelters. This was so uncharacteristic, that most people were more confused than alarmed. We thought: “Is that a siren to mark the beginning of Shabbat? They don’t usually have a signal to announce the start of Shabbat in our community, as they do in Jerusalem. But then the sound wouldn’t be going up and down like that. But I thought Hamas wasn’t interested in targeting Jerusalem, where they can hit the Al Aksa Mosque. Hmmm, I wonder what that is…”
Until now, the rockets have landed in the south of Israel. This time Hamas was aiming for Jerusalem, and therefore it landed near us, since we live near Jerusalem.
This event naturally came up for discussion in my study group the next day. One woman who had lived someplace else several years ago commented on the difference she had observed between two different people’s reactions to a terrorist on the loose in their area at that time. One person had panicked. She and her children needed therapy afterwards. Another person calmly told his kids to get into the car, reassuring them that they will be okay. Then he went to get help. His kids really were okay emotionally and physically.
The difference between the two people, she explained, was that for the mother who panicked, this was her first terrorist incident, while for the man, he had experienced this before. He had “acclimated himself,” if one can say that, to danger and knew how to immediately take charge of the situation.
This ability to take charge is a skill that can be developed. I am not sure whether the extra experience was the critical factor between the two, although I am sure it helped.
In the midst of crisis there is a lot of fright. The capacity to handle the situation calmly in the face of fear comes from an inner mechanism for taking charge. What is this mechanism?
Taking charge in a crisis is made possible when you can instantly redirect your raw emotions and channel them into action.
You don’t have to wait for a crisis to happen in order to do this. Although there is a difference in degree between crisis and overwhelm, there is probably not a difference in kind. Any time you are caught up in overwhelming emotions, the degree to which you can mobilize yourself to proactively respond rather than allow yourself to be flooded and drown in your emotions is the degree to which you will succeed in quickly translating those emotions into a plan of action.
While you can’t know for sure what you would do in a crisis situation, you are more likely to respond appropriately if you have already made this ‘translating skill’ into a habit. It can only help to grease the wheel, so to speak, and get into the habit of translating emotions into action all the time.
Not only will you help yourself and help others in a crisis should one ever occur. You will use your emotions constructively in everyday life.