Crisis Development
In a crisis, there are a series of recognizable behavior levels that a person may go through during a crisis moment. Recognizing the various behavioral levels will assist in de-escalating a situation, including getting out of harm’s way. Another benefit of recognizing crisis behavior is to avoid escalating the person/situation.
People are often the victims of threats or acts of violence because they don’t recognize escalating behavior. Therefore they fail to take the appropriate action to de-escalate the person/situation or by failing to manage their own anxiety, their behavior actually contributes to further escalation of the situation.
Anxiety
The first level of a crisis is anxiety. Anxiety is a change in a person’s behavior. A quiet person may suddenly become talkative, including mumbling to themselves or become very vocal. People that normally are talkative can become very quiet and reserved. Anxiety can also be displayed by pacing, finger drumming, wringing of the hands, or staring. The cause of anxiety is as a build-up energy.
Defensive
Without an appropriate response toward de-escalation, the crisis behavior can increase to the point where the person begins to lose rationality and control. The beginning stages of a lost or rationality are called defensive. The person can become belligerent and challenging. For Example, road-rage: Carl needs to be on time for an important appointment. Traffic is hindering his ability to make his appointment on time, which causes anxiety. While in traffic, Carl is rear-ended. At that point, anxiety increases to the next level of crisis development, and while exchanging information with the other driver, Carl begins to loss of rationality and becomes very belligerent. Carl has experience the first two levels of crisis development.
Risk Behavior
The height of crisis development is risk behavior. This is when a person totally losses control, which results in physical behavior that presents a risk of danger to the person and to others. Risk behavior includes hitting, biting, grabbing or self-injury. From the beginning of crisis development, imagine that Bob and Sue, a married couple for 5-years, have a disagreement. Their angry facial expression, and curled lips clearly show signs of anxiety. The disagreement escalates to the second level of crisis development when the two begin yelling, using profanity, and making verbal statements toward one another with the intent to be hurtful. At the height of crisis development, Carl starts to grab Sue. Sue scratches Bob across the face, the physical fighting continues until finally someone is seriously injured.
Tension Reduction
The final level of crisis development is called tension reduction—a decrease in physical and emotional energy, which normally occurs after the person has acted out of character. As the couple begins to regain rationality, they become remorseful for the damages they’ve caused to the other person. In some cases, the regaining of rationality brought about the realization that a life has been loss. During tension reduction, the acting out person will say things such as, I loss it; I don’t know what came over me, or I was no longer in control of myself.