29 creating a crisis plan

Before filling out your plan, you may want to review your list of distracting and self-soothing skills. It can also be helpful to share this plan with your support people, those in your life with whom you’re comfortable talking about your problems and know you can count on in times of crisis; for example, your best friend, a favorite aunt or uncle, or a Big Sister or Big Brother.

One of the biggest reasons crisis situations can be so hard to get through without making things worse is that we usually don’t plan ahead for them. This means that we end up falling back on those old, easy, comfortable, but unhealthy ways of coping. By working your way through this chapter—making a list of distracting and self-soothing skills, creating a safety box, and filling out your crisis plan—you’ve planned ahead. Now you just need to make sure you keep these things handy so that when you begin experiencing a crisis, you can pull out your list of skills and just start doing them—minimal thinking involved!

As you use these skills over time, you’ll find that the number of crises you experience decreases because you’re more capable of handling stress and other uncomfortable emotions and also because you’ll stop making things worse in a crisis, which in the past probably led to more crises. No longer falling back into those old patterns of behavior also means more support from your family and friends when they see that you really are trying hard to make changes in your life and in the way you manage your emotions.