How to Use Coping Skills in Emergency Situations

Do you know how to use coping skills in an emergency situation? Recently, while I was at a mental health facility, a series of tornadoes touched down and forced us to evacuate to the basement, three times (How to Create an Emergency Anxiety Toolkit). Unfortunately, several of the other mental health consumers had claustrophobia (literally). We had to know how to use coping skills in an emergency situation. Here's what I learned.

What Coping Skills for Emergency Situations Are the Best?

As we huddled in the basement, staff instructed us in taking deep breaths. If you're breathing rapidly, your heart rate goes up and you feel anxious even if nothing is wrong. This is even more true in an emergency--the calmer your breathing, the calmer you are.

Staff also made themselves available to talk to people in distress. Take the opportunity to talk to people about how you feel--it doesn't have to be a mental health professional--I told some old work stories to some nursing students.

Finally, remember the past--staff encouraged us to remember that we'd all survived the first and second evacuations, so we could survive the third.

Using Coping Skills in Emergencies Video

So that's how to use coping skills in an emergency situation. What coping skills do you use in an emergency and how do you use them?

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