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silveradept[The December Days theme this year is "Things I Used To Fully Believe About Myself." Some of these things might be familiar, some of them might be things you still believe about yourself, and some of them may be painful and traumatic for you based on your own beliefs and memories. The nice thing about text is that you can step away from it at any point and I won't know.]
#22: "I'm going to panic in a crisis."
It would be nice to have a life where things that require quick thinking just don't happen and someone can go through their life without getting to know cortisol as a very good friend. Unfortunately, the people who are generally able to avoid those kinds of situations are the kind of people who have been rich since birth, maintained that wealth all throughout their lives, and never had to worry that their phenomenal wealth would be taken from them by anyone who might have control over it or obtain it through deceptive or other criminal means. And they have been able to live in places that are not subject to war, upheaval, or the decision of the country next door that your right to exist no longer matters. And unlike the one who would become the Buddha, when confronted with the realities of sickness, old age, and death, they do not decide to put their resources toward enlightenment or trying to make it so others do not suffer so, but usually toward trying to prevent themselves from haing to confront those realities as long as possible.
I am definitely not someone with all of that wealth and ability to insulate myself from others, so, guess what? I've had more than my share of crisis situations. And I don't mean that in the Model United Nations sense, although all throughout my undergraduate, I did work on the Crisis staff and eventually co-directed it. (I wanted to do more ambitious things than I was allowed to do. Oh, well.) The kinds of things where you realize that you're in trouble, or someone else is, and there needs to be decisions made in a short amount of time.
Now, admittedly, a lot of the times where I've been in a crisis situation, it's been a crisis of my own making. The kind of thing that has sometimes been described as "smart kid trouble." Where you think you know what you're doing, and that you have it all under control, and then, not so much. The kind of thing where you buy a 3D accelerator card for your computer, and then wonder why you're not getting any video output when you swap out the video card for the new one and turn it on. (This is in the era before onboard video, and before 3D acceleration was considered part and parcel of every video card to be released.) That's the kind of thing where someone could panic. Or they could eventually figure out that the 3Dfx card they had bought was meant as a companion card to the already-present video card, and so what needed to be done was to link the output of the video card to the 3D accelerator card and then take the output from that card and run it to the monitor. I've had more than a few of those kinds of situations where I go "I think we're in trouble" and then, often, manage to fight my way out of it, even if it sometimes means that I have to strip a device down to the pads and use a built-in bypass to achieve the result that I wanted to have, along with some fun console tricks.
There have been other situations where paralyzing panic would have been a perfectly good reaction to the situation at hand. The person who chose to misinterpret my "this is what impromptu speaking is about" explanation to suggest that it would be entirely appropriate for me to have to deal with someone saying they were going to kill themselves at the end of a few seconds didn't get the response they wanted, because I floundered with the "that's not what this is about!" and didn't really go past that point. It wasn't fair, and it was cruel. Later on in life, however, when I have landed in a situation where someone said "umm, I think my friend might be ready to hurt themselves" in a social hangout space, I didn't panic and flounder. Instead, I started gathering information and trying to help assess the seriousness of the situation, while also trying to figure out what the actual correct procedure was to raise others who could help with that situation and provide their own assessment. I'm pretty sure that much of that action came from having read about what's actually useful in this situation, and that resurfaced itself at the right time. Things worked out fine for that person's friend. Things, thankfully, worked out fine for both of the people in my life who have had things that turned out to be cancer (and crossing my fingers that this time, for person #2, when we get it under control, it stays that way.) Support and understanding go pretty far in these situations. Things are working out for the person who I sent my telephone number to and a plea to call after they sent me a message that said "I Can't See A Way Out Of This," and while I didn't get my reply in time to head off the attempt, I did pick up the phone when called and fostered a friendship for someone who needed it desperately after the attempt failed and there was another morning to face.
It's not part of my nature or training to wait for things. Some of that is the variable attention stimulus trait, some part of that is the need to believe that I'm making all the effort I can to get to a good result (because if not, it's my fault it failed), and some of it is the belief that the knowledge and ability that I have is meant to be used in the service of getting good results for myself and others. (Sometimes the priorities are skewed, because my needs come last is still a likely attitude.) I am the person who needs to remember to ask "Do you want possible solutions and research, or do you want me only to listen to what you are saying and be empathetic?" Because every part of me looks at a problem, whether of my own making or for someone else, and says "This is fixable." Even though sometimes it would require a lot more action and effort on the part of others to implement the solution that I believe will work. To some degree, my ability to succeed at getting myself out of the problems that I encounter our that I put myself into further makes me believe that I can solve other problems. And that the solutions seem easy and doable, at least in their optimistic forms. The difficult part, of course, is that so many solutions involve other people, and no matter how much I might believe my arguments and points are persuasive, intelligent, well-reasoned and insightful, there's the high likelihood that nobody is going to listen to me, unless it's something in my expertise, and even then, since I'm not a manager, they might still not listen to me.
Knowing you don't panic in a crisis sometimes leads to a fun time, though. Last month, the director of my library system was out to my location to film some marketing material and to do a story time with me so they could get the stuff they wanted. The first thing that went wrong was the clipped microphone was on the jacket, and the director took the jacket off to do the story time, which was no real trouble, if what they had wanted was just the visuals. The slightly more concerning thing that happened was that while in the middle of the story time, the power cut at my location. (A substation had failed.) So I suddenly didn't have my slides or my soundtrack or anything else electronic that I normally use for the program. That would certainly be cause to panic, right? A power outage in a story time while the director of the library system is there.
Not really. One of the rules of web page development is that a site should degrade gracefully, so that it is still functional and usable even if the person coming to the site doesn't have lots of bandwidth, or hasn't turned on JavaScript, or is still trying to access the Web through Lynx or Netscape Navigator 3. Story times are arranged in the same way. The electronic things are nice, but they are not necessary to the experience of the story time, and so when the power cuts out in the middle of something that you were doing, you wait a beat or two to see if the power is coming back on, and then you continue the story time as if nothing had happened. Which I did. And it was fine. The grownups went along with it, the director went along with it, and when we went to the post-story time play session, the lights and the power returned, so we didn't have to make any decisions about closing the library, either. No actual need to panic about any of this at all. (And yet, I gave the director and the cameraperson the kudos for rolling with an odd situation, rather than receiving any such thing from them on their end. Just another one of those situations where "meets expectations" apparently includes continuing to do a program through a power outage.)
So, no, it turns out that I'm not the kind of person who stays panicked in a crisis. I'm going to find solutions, even if they're suboptimal.
#22: "I'm going to panic in a crisis."
It would be nice to have a life where things that require quick thinking just don't happen and someone can go through their life without getting to know cortisol as a very good friend. Unfortunately, the people who are generally able to avoid those kinds of situations are the kind of people who have been rich since birth, maintained that wealth all throughout their lives, and never had to worry that their phenomenal wealth would be taken from them by anyone who might have control over it or obtain it through deceptive or other criminal means. And they have been able to live in places that are not subject to war, upheaval, or the decision of the country next door that your right to exist no longer matters. And unlike the one who would become the Buddha, when confronted with the realities of sickness, old age, and death, they do not decide to put their resources toward enlightenment or trying to make it so others do not suffer so, but usually toward trying to prevent themselves from haing to confront those realities as long as possible.
I am definitely not someone with all of that wealth and ability to insulate myself from others, so, guess what? I've had more than my share of crisis situations. And I don't mean that in the Model United Nations sense, although all throughout my undergraduate, I did work on the Crisis staff and eventually co-directed it. (I wanted to do more ambitious things than I was allowed to do. Oh, well.) The kinds of things where you realize that you're in trouble, or someone else is, and there needs to be decisions made in a short amount of time.
Now, admittedly, a lot of the times where I've been in a crisis situation, it's been a crisis of my own making. The kind of thing that has sometimes been described as "smart kid trouble." Where you think you know what you're doing, and that you have it all under control, and then, not so much. The kind of thing where you buy a 3D accelerator card for your computer, and then wonder why you're not getting any video output when you swap out the video card for the new one and turn it on. (This is in the era before onboard video, and before 3D acceleration was considered part and parcel of every video card to be released.) That's the kind of thing where someone could panic. Or they could eventually figure out that the 3Dfx card they had bought was meant as a companion card to the already-present video card, and so what needed to be done was to link the output of the video card to the 3D accelerator card and then take the output from that card and run it to the monitor. I've had more than a few of those kinds of situations where I go "I think we're in trouble" and then, often, manage to fight my way out of it, even if it sometimes means that I have to strip a device down to the pads and use a built-in bypass to achieve the result that I wanted to have, along with some fun console tricks.
There have been other situations where paralyzing panic would have been a perfectly good reaction to the situation at hand. The person who chose to misinterpret my "this is what impromptu speaking is about" explanation to suggest that it would be entirely appropriate for me to have to deal with someone saying they were going to kill themselves at the end of a few seconds didn't get the response they wanted, because I floundered with the "that's not what this is about!" and didn't really go past that point. It wasn't fair, and it was cruel. Later on in life, however, when I have landed in a situation where someone said "umm, I think my friend might be ready to hurt themselves" in a social hangout space, I didn't panic and flounder. Instead, I started gathering information and trying to help assess the seriousness of the situation, while also trying to figure out what the actual correct procedure was to raise others who could help with that situation and provide their own assessment. I'm pretty sure that much of that action came from having read about what's actually useful in this situation, and that resurfaced itself at the right time. Things worked out fine for that person's friend. Things, thankfully, worked out fine for both of the people in my life who have had things that turned out to be cancer (and crossing my fingers that this time, for person #2, when we get it under control, it stays that way.) Support and understanding go pretty far in these situations. Things are working out for the person who I sent my telephone number to and a plea to call after they sent me a message that said "I Can't See A Way Out Of This," and while I didn't get my reply in time to head off the attempt, I did pick up the phone when called and fostered a friendship for someone who needed it desperately after the attempt failed and there was another morning to face.
It's not part of my nature or training to wait for things. Some of that is the variable attention stimulus trait, some part of that is the need to believe that I'm making all the effort I can to get to a good result (because if not, it's my fault it failed), and some of it is the belief that the knowledge and ability that I have is meant to be used in the service of getting good results for myself and others. (Sometimes the priorities are skewed, because my needs come last is still a likely attitude.) I am the person who needs to remember to ask "Do you want possible solutions and research, or do you want me only to listen to what you are saying and be empathetic?" Because every part of me looks at a problem, whether of my own making or for someone else, and says "This is fixable." Even though sometimes it would require a lot more action and effort on the part of others to implement the solution that I believe will work. To some degree, my ability to succeed at getting myself out of the problems that I encounter our that I put myself into further makes me believe that I can solve other problems. And that the solutions seem easy and doable, at least in their optimistic forms. The difficult part, of course, is that so many solutions involve other people, and no matter how much I might believe my arguments and points are persuasive, intelligent, well-reasoned and insightful, there's the high likelihood that nobody is going to listen to me, unless it's something in my expertise, and even then, since I'm not a manager, they might still not listen to me.
Knowing you don't panic in a crisis sometimes leads to a fun time, though. Last month, the director of my library system was out to my location to film some marketing material and to do a story time with me so they could get the stuff they wanted. The first thing that went wrong was the clipped microphone was on the jacket, and the director took the jacket off to do the story time, which was no real trouble, if what they had wanted was just the visuals. The slightly more concerning thing that happened was that while in the middle of the story time, the power cut at my location. (A substation had failed.) So I suddenly didn't have my slides or my soundtrack or anything else electronic that I normally use for the program. That would certainly be cause to panic, right? A power outage in a story time while the director of the library system is there.
Not really. One of the rules of web page development is that a site should degrade gracefully, so that it is still functional and usable even if the person coming to the site doesn't have lots of bandwidth, or hasn't turned on JavaScript, or is still trying to access the Web through Lynx or Netscape Navigator 3. Story times are arranged in the same way. The electronic things are nice, but they are not necessary to the experience of the story time, and so when the power cuts out in the middle of something that you were doing, you wait a beat or two to see if the power is coming back on, and then you continue the story time as if nothing had happened. Which I did. And it was fine. The grownups went along with it, the director went along with it, and when we went to the post-story time play session, the lights and the power returned, so we didn't have to make any decisions about closing the library, either. No actual need to panic about any of this at all. (And yet, I gave the director and the cameraperson the kudos for rolling with an odd situation, rather than receiving any such thing from them on their end. Just another one of those situations where "meets expectations" apparently includes continuing to do a program through a power outage.)
So, no, it turns out that I'm not the kind of person who stays panicked in a crisis. I'm going to find solutions, even if they're suboptimal.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 12:41 am (UTC)I'm sensing a theme.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 11:42 pm (UTC)The Dreamwidth User in Peril phone tree and implementation plan is on the wiki: http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/wiki/index.php/Escalation#User_in_peril_phone_tree
and I will reproduce it here because while I expect Dreamwidth to be around for a while, sometimes multiple copies of things help.
User in peril phone tree
Who to contact first:
Goes most direct to least direct
What ToS needs to know:
What sort of peril? Why are they in danger?
Are there any factors that would put them in more danger if the wrong emergency service shows up? (Example: if police show up for a Black man with a medical or mental health emergency.)
What ToS needs to find:
In case of a user with suicide plans, it can help if friends:
Implementation:
no subject
Date: 2023-12-24 01:21 am (UTC)