How Do You Know When You're In Crisis?

[joeylittle]

When parts inside are warring with one another, and one is never quite sure what actually will happen next, and the chances of self-harm through risky behavior, or active destructiveness are unpredictable--isn't that a crisis? Or I suppose it would be considered an imminent crisis.

I think this is why training in management skills is so important. I'm not even going to say 'coping' skills, but personal crisis management, maybe.

What you are talking about here is potential loss of impulse control - that's how I'd frame it, anyway. There's a broad definition of the concept if 'impulse control' in psychiatry, but I find it useful specifically in terms of crisis management. For a chunk of time in my own trauma processing, I had very little impulse control over self-harm, cutting specifically. The only part of me in control was the part that avoided major veins and arteries - and that's not really safe - forget healthy, just safe. So my focus for awhile was just on learning to catch the trigger, even err on the side of anticipating it, and figure out a technique that would keep me away from cutting, at least long enough to get on the phone to my therapist (who has been really instrumental for me in a lot of this stuff).

I think people who can live and function under a strong amount of pressure have just developed strong impulse control. I'm not saying other people are weak, by the way - I think strong impulse control can get very dangerous because it lets you go too long, sometimes, and then things can just snap.

Everyone's snap point is unique. I know myself, I have a high tolerance for a lot of stuff. Since I have experienced total loss of impulse control (and just got lucky I didn't die), I know what it is, and I also have skills I didn't use to have to keep me from getting there again, and a safety net that works for me put into place.

I'd think it's exponentially more complicated with DID, but your parts need to start learning some skills for tolerating distress, and a shared understanding of why its actually better to use them.

Link Removed <grin> Different definitions! To me, that's ideation or struggling.

Agree 100%.

 

[Hope4Now]

Thank you, @joeylittle for your post. You've articulated clearly and briefly what I need to do. This is really helpful. I do have a lot of impulsive parts I need to work with.

training in management skills is so important

This is why I am feeling somewhat hopeful about the skills I'll learn in the residential program I start next week. I'm pretty sure that is what DBT is all about...And I will have a two full weeks' introduction to it.

And, LOL, maybe I should go back and re-read my own books about self-management. Ha ha. Oh, the irony of it all still cuts me to the core.

I think strong impulse control can get very dangerous because it lets you go too long, sometimes, and then things can just snap.

Yes, this is what happened to me. I've snapped before, but never so dramatically as 18 months ago when everything exploded in slo-mo out of my system. It is still exploding. Think stop-time photography.

 

[Tinyflame]

Dear @Hope4Now not sure why it came to me but I thought of at an accident scene, you have to tend to the silent injured before those who are vocal. Maybe you can think of it that way as regards the validity of yourself & your own needs. :hug:

 

[Deleted member 29899]

Crisis is different things to different people. What's EXTRMELY stressful to one, another may flick it off their shoulder. I guess that's the gist of it. To one person a major crisis might be their spouse walking out with a suitcase and they call the crisis line because they actually feel like they're losing it, any maybe they are. To another it may that they are ready to suicide- now. I had a friend that was suicicdal because her dog just died (she's crying on my shoulder when my spouse suicided 4 days prior.) I guess all our breaking points are different as we are all so different.