Crisis and reactions thereto

[spookyevilone]

Red mentioned that her response to crisis is "feed it" or "kill it", (and later added "burn it" and "climb it") and it made me think about how I deal with crisis.

I'm an opinionated little hothead about everything that doesn't matter. It's always interested me that people think my reaction to inconsequential crap has any bearing on how I would react in a crisis. Very few people have ever seen me in an actual crisis situation, because there are just not that many situations that constitute a crisis in my world. Unless someone's spurting from an artery, zombies have risen and are overtaking the populated areas, or a comet is about to hit the earth, it's just not that high on my scale of impending doomy doomness. Two generations of my family being wiped out in a burning car crash? Crisis. Anything involving the SCA up to and including picking up and moving the biggest event in our kingdom with only six week's notice? Not a crisis.

Losing my cool doesn't happen. I drop into a cold, analytical mindspace and things get Dealt With, calmly, rationally, quickly and with amazing efficiency. In essence, I channel my grandmother, and that Peregrine is much, much different than the everyday mouthy bitch most people either love or hate. Things don't rattle my tree until the crisis has been Dealt With to my satisfaction. Then, I may curl up in a corner and rock back and forth in my own private little freak out. Usually by that time, I don't need to, because it's over and has been Dealt With, most often in a manner which would prevent said crisis from rearing its ugly head in that same manner ever again.

Someone else asked today, what do you do when you can't do anything. No such beast. There is always something I can do, whether it has a direct and tangible effect or not. I loathe feeling helpless, so I find a way to empower myself. The drive to fight off the helpless feeling, the compulsion to Do Something, is .. scary, because I have a wide variety of eclectic resources to call upon. Which may be one reason I just don't get to that state very often. I tend to burn away anything in my path when I'm in that mode, and sometimes the cost-benefit analysis is not strong enough.

Though the fact that there's a cost-benefit analysis to extreme situations probably says something about me. It just better not say it to my face or it'll get slapped upside the head.

Comments

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

Yes. If there is a crisis, I may get 5 min at the very beginning to wail about it, but it must be dealt with. I don't have time to be ineffective. If I had time, it wouldn't be a crisis.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I will admit that when it was my finger gushing blood, I freaked out for about five minutes while trying to figure out what to do. There was pacing and swearing, and trying to dig out my insurance card, and then lanome helped me badange it up with some paper towels and only after that did I finally focus enough to call mom. And once I did that, then we could handle the part of finishing the pre-cooking. Crisis not involving parts of myself still sticking to the mandolin? No problem.

("burn it" and "climb it" isn't crisis response, it's obstacle response, really. Or you know, something is THERE and something must be done, SO LETS WATCH THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN)