Achieving Happiness Column for 10-10-04 By Tom Muha, Ph.D. COPING WITH A CRISIS Handling a crisis is always hard. Some people sink while others swim. Our friends from Vero Beach, FL were visiting us the weekend that hurricane Jeanne hit. Ron and Karen were worried about their home, but reassured themselves by saying their place had survived the hurricane that hit there just a few weeks before. But then came the dreaded phone call from their neighbors telling them that their roof had blown off and their home had been destroyed. It was hard to see our friends sobbing as they tried to comfort each another. Over the next several hours they received a steady stream of phone calls from friends in Florida. By the end of the day they had several offers of places to stay upon their return. Ron and Karen were very appreciative of all that we did for them on that difficult day. We’d actually felt helpless to change anything, but they commented on how comforting it felt to receive an abundance of compassion from their friends. Interestingly, they didn’t return home right away. Instead, they went to New Jersey to visit their family. They had quickly reviewed their choices, and decided to focus first on what they valued most in life - children and grandchildren. It became clear that our friends had given themselves some breathing room by putting their problem on the back burner for a couple of days and immersing themselves in a loving and supportive environment. This gave them time to mentally grapple with the severe stress, and helped them to avoid being consumed by their sadness and fear. Instead of putting themselves in a position in which they would likely be overwhelmed by their negative reactions, they waited to respond until they could see some possibilities for the situation working out in a satisfactory fashion. The positive psychology research has found that this is a characteristic method of coping that is used by people who are generally very happy. They establish an emotional barrier between the crisis and the good parts of their life. Studies have shown that by compartmentalizing their lives in this way, high functioning people prevent their whole life from becoming contaminated by the crisis. This gives them some solid ground on which they can construct a proactive position. Healing is more than just fixing a problem. It involves developing what positive psychologist Aaron Antonovsky calls a “sense of coherence” about your life. His research reveals that your well-being is less impacted by external events and more influenced by how you choose to construct your internal world. It’s how you think about a situation that controls how you feel, and how you feel determines what you do. In order to restore a sense of coherence, your thinking needs to evolve through four phases. Coping with the craziness that occurs in your life begins by consciously looking for what’s going right in order to offset your tendency to obsess over what’s gone wrong. Next you need to decide of how you are going to explain the impact of the awful event. If you choose to use an optimistic style of thinking, you’ll tell yourself that the problem is temporary and is limited to a specific area of your life. You’ll go on to remind yourself that it’s the positive parts that are permanent and will pervade all aspects of your life. The third step is to find a meaningful framework in which to place the problem. I had to do that when bypass surgery caused me to give up cruising on my sailboat. I found new meaning by becoming a coach who helps others learn how to have more happiness. The final phase is the ongoing process of managing your mind so that you maintain control over your own consciousness. People with a high level of happiness never surrender mental control because they stay focused on figuring out choices to respond to challenges rather than allowing themselves to think that things are hopeless. When a crisis occurs, you cannot let fear contaminate your thinking and drive you into impulsive fight, flight or freeze reactions. You need to “change your mind” by having faith that you can pull together your inner resources and external support system in order to overcome the troubles that you are facing. Successfully confronting a crisis requires using positive thinking skills: remember what’s still good, tell yourself the problem will pass, look for the silver lining, and use your faith to fight your fear.   Tom Muha is a psychologist in Annapolis. He welcomes your comments and questions. To contact him call (443) 454-7274 or email him at tom@achievinghappiness.com.