Crisis.

(This all ties so please read to the end. It's worth your time.)

During one of my mental health training videos it described the word crisis as when a person experiences stressors in which they are ill-equipped to deal with their situation and go beyond their learned coping skills. In this state is when a persons truest, and most undifferentiated, nature comes out. For some this behavior includes verbal hostility, like name calling or yelling, but for others this behavior includes physical hostility, like slamming doors or punching stuff/people.

A lot of times crisis can lead to cathartic (or alleviating) experiences, if only the person proves capable of learning the proper coping skills needed to avoid being overwhelmed by similar future stressors, but most of the time people are so unwilling to change they live their lives in a vicious cycle of being poorly differentiated people lacking the simplest coping skills needed to resolve their stressors.

Basically coping skills are like a "tool belt". Look up good mental health coping skills (and bad ones) if you want more info on that... also look up what differentiation means. Simply put, good coping skills can keep you from going into crisis... or "flipping out". Think about the last time you felt uncomfortable or offended in a social setting and all of a sudden your ability to reason, to love others, to be nice and smile and to be in an appropriate state of mind went out the window. Most of the time when this happens you end up lashing out and remorseful, saying something like, "I don't know what got in to me. I don't know why I lashed out."... Well its simple, you were a lowly differentiated person who lacked the skills to cope amidst your insecurities.

When we are mocked or our pride is challenged or our ability to be successful is questioned... all of these things, and others, target our insecurities and make us suspect to crisis. If properly differentiated and with a good "tool belt", a person will respond knowing that nothing can retract from their own value as an individual. If not properly differentiated and with an underdeveloped "tool belt"... you're looking at crisis.

As a christian my personal biggest coping skill is the ability to rely on a sovereign God who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. I also like to exercise, eat well, read, hang with people and watch funny movies... but the love given by a Savior fuels the meaning of all those other things.

However, I'm still suspect to crisis. Most of the time this happens to me when I feel overwhelmingly rejected or even reminded of how I've been rejected. Rejections like thinking about how my biological family won't talk to me anymore or how I've been blocked/excommunicated by Christian communities I grew roots in... or even how our "American church" views me after being divorced. Rejection isn't the only thing that triggers crisis for me either. The feeling of not having control does too. Like not being able to control one of my family members diagnosis of Paranoia disorder.. or not being able to control how I continuously sin against my Savior (which if you're a believer you know isn't even ABOUT control but releasing it).

I'm still in my own process of becoming more differentiated and learning good coping skills so that I don't continually fall into crisis and run to bad coping skills but it's a hard battle. With a lot of pain. I thank my Savior for including me in the beloved though.. I really do.  After reading all of this I want you to ask yourself, What do I run to to ease the pain I carry? What sends me into crisis and what coping skills do I use? Are they healthy ones or detrimental ones? Evaluate yourself... Because by doing so you may be freeing yourself of a vicious cycle. And if you can't find much wrong with yourself after an evaluation then pick up a book on excuses and blaming others because your battle with self realization has barely begun.

I apologize if this reads jumpy. Maybe I'm in crisis :).

God is so good to us... and He has been good to me.