What is a crisis in psychology and how to determine its development?

Crisis concept

Often a person is faced with a moment when he begins to worry about some problem. The feeling of excitement constantly intensifies and does not leave him, negative thoughts continue to constantly visit his consciousness. Often this problem arises due to a change that served as the impetus for the transition to a new stage of life. He does not agree with this change and is not ready to put up with it. This state is called a crisis.

Psychology briefly defines this concept. A psychological crisis is a person’s emotional state resulting from a stressful situation associated with unwanted changes in life. A more detailed explanation of the definition of crisis in psychology states that a crisis is a state of severe transitional change in a person’s feelings, resulting from experienced stress, associated with an illness, or resulting from mental trauma. A crisis is also determined by an emotionally significant event or a radical change in status in one’s personal life, which negatively affects a person’s moral well-being.

Is it possible to overcome

How to cheer yourself up quickly when you feel bad - methods and tips

Most psychologists believe that a crisis is the most important prerequisite for personal change, the nature of which can be either positive: constructive, creative, integrative, or negative: destructive, destructive.

Important! Psychology says that you can overcome a crisis on your own, but it is better if your loved ones help. Parents can help their child. To do this, it is necessary to penetrate into the inner world of a teenager, find out what he is interested in, accept his musical preferences, clothing style, and worldview. Family and friends will help an adult facing a crisis.

Growing up crises

Types of crisis in psychology

There is a classification of crises experienced by a person, which differ in their form, sources of experiences and stages of his life development. Thus, psychology in life crises makes a distinction in three main areas:

• Neurotic crises. They are based on age-related changes and can be generated in a person’s mind even without changing external conditions or the influence of external factors on his psycho-emotional state. As a rule, neurotic crises begin in childhood, when primary communications with the surrounding society and environment are established. This type of turning point in life predetermines, in fact, an unreasonable feeling of a hopeless situation, a feeling of being at a dead end. This entails personality disadaptation or, simply put, recluse.
• Development crises. Otherwise referred to as age-related crises. In modern psychology, there are a number of boundary age stages at which the human emotional and psychological state changes, the perception of what is happening and the attitude towards the world around us varies. Changes in the form, duration and severity of such turning points depend directly on the specific personality of the individual and his typological characteristics, as well as on the social conditions of stay and pedagogical influence. Some experts consider the manifestation of an age crisis in psychology to be an absolutely normal phenomenon, since this is how the personal and characteristic components of a person as a social unit are formed. But many see this as a malignant manifestation that prevents a person from adapting normally to communicating with peers in childhood and adolescence and from finding communication in adulthood.
• Traumatic crises. The psychology of children, adolescents, adults and the elderly is not immune from the negative influence on the conscious processes of such external factors as tragic life situations. Accidents, natural disasters and other catastrophic events provide a powerful impetus for the occurrence of depression and a long-term crisis process of stagnation arising from a stressful state.

conclusions

Psychological crises are not just a necessity, but the most important, irreplaceable condition for the normal continuation of a person’s future life and his development. The main thing in any crisis is its outcome. Behind the negative traits of behavior during crisis periods of life is hidden the positive essence of crises, which consists in the transition to a new, qualitatively higher model of behavior. A crisis is both a driving force of development and a sharp leap in human development. Without changing his behavior, a person simply will not be able to continue further normal life and development. People grow and develop only through crises.

Age crisis

In the system of life turning points, it is the development crisis that occupies a significant niche. Age-related crises in psychology are usually divided into nine stages.

• Stage 1 – neonatal crisis. It implies instability at all levels of the infant’s physiological and psycho-emotional state. Accustomed to the established processes in the womb, he is not ready to immediately after birth adapt to another sphere of habitat. The psychology of the age crisis in infants is the mildest and most easily experienced, since difficulties are expressed more in the physical restructuring of the infant’s body.
• Stage 2 – one-year crisis. It assumes the formation of a child who is open to the first educational processes. He learns to sit, walk, talk, and switch from breast milk to adult food. This is a kind of stress for a child, because he is crossing the border of the first year of his life.
• Stage 3 – three-year crisis. It manifests itself in children in different ways, but is mainly determined by extreme stubbornness, whims and self-will. During this period of life, it is common for a baby to periodically refuse food that he does not like, resist going to bed, and not want to dress himself or put away toys.
• Stage 4 – preschool crisis. Developmental psychology in a 7-year-old child is based on the formation of his social sense of his “I”. At this time, the baby begins to imitate adults, act in manners, and talk about his desires. This is no longer the same baby who can only pronounce individual words and carefree play with game attributes scattered on the floor. The age-related psychology of the 7-year-old crisis presupposes the child’s departure from early childhood and the loss of childish naivety and spontaneity. At this time, it becomes more difficult for parents to control their child, because the baby begins to spend more time outside the home, with his peers, and at school. The process of adapting to new living conditions, meeting a large number of new people, classmates and teachers become unusual for a 7-year-old child. The psychology of the crisis of this time for children’s consciousness is determined by the child’s first manifestations of his own “I”.
• Stage 5 – crisis of 13 years or puberty crisis. The psychology of adolescence presupposes the beginning of the child’s personal development, the formation of his psycho-emotional development. This period is accompanied by rapid changes not only morally, but also physically. Therefore, this age is otherwise called transitional.
• Stage 6 – youth crisis. Occurs in a teenager when he reaches 17 years of age, when he seems to be no longer a teenager, but not yet an adult. At this stage, the question arises about choosing one’s future, related to the end of general education and the need to enter a university and determine one’s profession. Often young people cannot cope with their desires and their preferences, it is difficult for them to understand what they want from life, who they dream of becoming, which is why a turning point of crisis arises.
• Stage 7 – 30-year crisis. In the psychology of age, a special place is occupied by the period of maturity, which is marked by summing up the first life results. While it is welcomed by men, women want to delay the moment of turning thirty as far as possible.
• Stage 8 – crisis of 40 years. This period of life is endured by women even more painfully than the previous one. They begin to feel not as beautiful as before, so they are often depressed. But not only ladies experience this stage with difficulty. For men, turning 40 is the first signal in the gradual fading of former strength in all physiological respects, but physical strength and health are almost the main dignity of every man.
• Stage 9 - crisis of age over 50. At a time when a fifty-year-old person must take stock of the work done in life and dreams realized, he, unfortunately, has to realize the fact that most half of his life has already been lived, that those happy moments cannot be returned , which made him so happy before that he couldn’t become younger and healthier, that he wouldn’t be able to do everything that could have been done in his youth.

The psychology of life crises over the years, using the example of people of different age categories, reveals the characteristics and forms of manifestation of emotional instability and restructuring of a person against the background of age-related changes in his body.

Features of the course and significance of critical ages

Children develop gradually and in stages. If we conventionally consider “childhood” to be the age from 0 to 18 years, then it has its own periods. And they do not coincide with the year of life. The cyclical nature of development has psychological prerequisites. The main stages of a child’s development as a person are: newbornhood, infancy, early childhood, preschool childhood, primary school, adolescence, adolescence.

In each of the designated periods, children acquire certain skills and abilities, and each of them ends with a crisis, after which everything acquired is improved and supplemented. This, according to psychologists, is quite natural. The crisis stage is a stepping stone for the transition to another period of development, a kind of “psychological push”. It lasts for several months, but it has no clear boundaries. It is not always possible to accurately determine that “perestroika” has already begun.

So, the main transition points from one stage of development to another in the psychology of children:

• newborn crisis: transition from newborn to infancy;
• crisis of a one-year-old child: transition from infancy to early childhood;
• crisis of three years: a step from early childhood to the preschool period;
• crisis of seven-year-old children: preschoolers become schoolchildren;
• teenage crisis: transition from elementary school to middle school (the child is 11 or 12 years old at this time);
• crisis of early adolescence: the line between childhood and adulthood (15-17 years).

Crisis states in children occur in different ways. For some, the passage of the turning point is accompanied by increased nervous excitability, bad behavior, and for others, illness.

Parents play a major role in creating optimal conditions for children experiencing a certain crisis. They need to be balanced, friendly and tolerant. Adult support is very important for children during such difficult periods.

How does this happen in men?

Crisis moments manifest themselves differently in people of different genders, age groups, and social strata of the population. For example, the psychology of an age-related crisis in children differs significantly from that of adults, and the ways in which men and women cope with turning points in life also differ. When is the most common turning point in a man's life? What is it justified by?

A crisis in a man’s psychology often occurs with the onset of his fortieth birthday. The forties are “fatal” - this is how a man interprets the period when he comes to the realization that he is no longer that young and lively handsome man, full of health and strength. The fact is that a man is essentially a breadwinner. By the age of forty, he takes stock of his half-lived life and assesses the current situation. If by this time he has reached the pinnacle of his career, is successfully working, is financially secure and able to support his family, he is happy. But a man constantly needs emotional nourishment. He wants to be admired, thanked for his work, told what a “well done” he is. A common problem that arises in men closer to forty is the search for a “spectator”. After all, his wife, who has long been accustomed to his professional achievements and has lived with him for twenty years, takes his earnings for granted and does not consider it something special. And a man craves to be appreciated, he requires constant attention. The fact is that a representative of the stronger half should feel powerful and omnipotent, but his wife no longer provides him with this feeling.

That is why so often men after forty begin to look for young beauties who admire their position in society, their achievements, their stateliness.

In addition to feelings of moral and emotional dissatisfaction, signs of rectal dysfunction give their first “bells”. A man's libido is his strength, his self-confidence, his pride in himself. And then suddenly, seemingly for no apparent reason, the first signals of the body’s age-related resistance begin to appear. At the same time, the man becomes irritable, he loses faith in himself, constantly thinks about it and begins to think negatively. It is then that a form of age crisis manifests itself in representatives of the stronger sex.

The psychology of many men is designed in such a way that his “dignity” is the main proof that he is really a man. When for some reason it stops working as before, it seems to him that life is over, that everything is very bad, that his wife, his co-workers at work, the whole world are to blame for this. According to statistics, it is this age category that accounts for the largest number of divorce proceedings, because “alpha males” explain all their troubles by the inattention, coldness and indifference of their wives, they find any clues in order to create a scandal and accuse the woman of being where she is. I was wrong. Although the point here is solely in the man and in his crisis state of the “fatal” forties.

Let's study the features of transition stages

As a result of the study of difficult psychological stages common to all people, features were identified that distinguish adult crises from childhood and adolescent crises. The authors (V.I. Slobodchikov, V.F. Morgun, B.S. Bratus, E.A. Sergienko, etc.) summarized the differences as follows:

• awareness;
• secrecy;
• large time gap between crises (7-10 years);
• the importance of individual life pattern, and not chronological age.

Crisis researchers call changes in individual qualities “psychological neoplasms.”

Destructive ones include:

• depression of emotional and volitional qualities (increased anxiety, decreased ability to perform volitional actions, psychological discomfort);
• decline in cognitive processes (deterioration of memory, attention, ability to think) relative to the individual norm;
• destruction of behavioral stereotypes, partial or complete loss of previously acquired skills;
• a radical change in values, beliefs, ideals.

With a successful exit from a critical period, a person develops qualitatively new attitudes, life goals are determined, emotional and volitional qualities are strengthened, and general harmonization of the personality occurs.

How does this happen in women?

If we talk about women, their crisis stage begins ten years earlier than that of men. At the age of 30-35, representatives of the fair half usually begin to think that half their lives have already been lived, and the goals and dreams that were thought up in their distant youth have not been realized. Mature beauties begin to rush around in their own doubts. During this period, many of them are characterized by a bad mood, loss of spirit, and a depressive state. All this together is generated by a midlife crisis. How does it manifest itself?

• Loss of self-confidence. It is difficult for representatives of the weak half of humanity to be satisfied with themselves when they are tormented by any doubts. They creep up unnoticed, but grow with lightning speed and powerful force. Uncertainty in her irresistibility, in her strengths, in her need for her family drives a woman into a dead end and aggravates the crisis.
• Dissatisfaction with appearance is one of the most terrible female phobias. The reason for this condition is the loss of youthful beauty and charm, the appearance of facial wrinkles and excess weight gain. At this age, many women especially suffer from an inferiority complex, often completely unreasonably.
• Awareness of the beginning of the aging process - panic fear seizes women when they “exchange” their fourth decade of life. It seems to many of them that they are already completely unattractive to men, that they can no longer enjoy success among them. There is a constant comparison of oneself with the younger generation of young beauties. Thus, an analysis of one’s age-related changes is made and the state of depressive stagnation intensifies.
• A feeling of uselessness - if a lady in her thirties is not yet married, the fear of eternal celibacy settles in her mind. She looks at the surrounding female colleagues, friends, acquaintances who have successfully married and have been happy wives for a long time, and she is overcome by a feeling of total despondency and emotional discomfort. She wants love, attention, affection, care, and (most importantly) a stamp in her passport.
• Feeling of unfulfilled duty. Any female representative has a maternal instinct. This is inherent in nature, which does not choose who to give the happiness of becoming a mother and who not. Basically, all women dream of becoming mothers and raising children for their own joy. But today's modernity is so harsh that girls, being young, purposeful, and valuing themselves highly, often refuse men who want to connect their lives with them. First, they push away a potential husband, and then cry at the age of thirty that there is still no spouse who could give them the opportunity to become a happy mother. In fact, women experience this period very, very painfully. This is perhaps one of the peak moments of the crisis of a woman’s thirtieth birthday.

Mental Pain Resources

When I started conducting a workshop on the resources of mental pain, many colleagues angrily said: “Pain is when the soul is torn apart, and mental pain has no resources.” If we look a little deeper and see “for whom the bell tolls”, for whom or what our soul aches, then inevitably in our mind we will find the value that we have taken out of use.

The main thing that brings us pain and any negative emotions in general is feedback - a kind of signpost for the road. In this regard, the value of any negative emotions and experiences is much higher than the value of positive ones. The latter seem to say: “Everything is fine. Keep up the good work." This doesn't always turn out well. The system is deprived of guidelines that would allow it to be corrected. Examples of such positive feedback: paranoia and a permissive style of raising a child (no matter what the child does, everything is right). And negative feedback is a signal of a deviation that needs to be eliminated. Carrying out the work of the crisis, we move to the next phase, it is called the phase of integration, recovery, reconstruction. The crisis begins to turn into a past life event. This transformation of a crisis into a story about oneself is a rather long process.

A person must learn to live again, rebuild the destroyed world and look for an integrating basis in order to build it according to the changed life. As a rule, we find this basis not in books and films, not from authorities. We find it under our feet.

Tell yourself: “I understand that I am suffering, that I am in a lot of pain right now, and I understand that I am now thinking about what happened. But besides this, there is simply my life, and I continue, perhaps unconsciously, to invest my strength in something.” What? This is what the world is reassembling around

Pay attention not to what is convex, but to the ordinary facts of existence. Simple things

I continue to feed my children, take care of my loved ones, and walk my dog. I can suffer, howl, work with a psychotherapist, remain silent, drive myself into a funnel of trauma, but there are things that I continue to do. Life gathers around what we continue to invest our strength in, no matter what.”

Thursday, 09/19/2019

Relationship crisis

The relationship between a man and a woman, their carnal connection, passionate feelings, emotions and love are an integral part of the life of every representative of humanity. Absolutely all people at a certain point in their lives want to love and be loved. As a result, love, sexual, and partnership relationships begin between young people of opposite sexes, which, oddly enough, can also undergo a crisis.

The psychology of relationships is based on many factors of spending time together. Often, not yet being husband and wife, young people undergo a crisis phase in their cohabitation or existence, which ends in separation. What is it?

A relationship crisis is a period in a couple’s life when one of the parties is no longer satisfied with the course of their existence together. This is the moment when partners no longer want to live as before, they want changes and redirection of the love affair in another, new and more pleasant direction. But often young people do not find consensus, misunderstand each other, get into trouble and come to the only right way out - separation. This is a relationship crisis. It is very difficult to overcome if young people have lost interest in each other. Therefore, it is easier to prevent the onset of a crisis phase in a relationship than to try to change something when both no longer need it.

Reassembly: five R

Let's consider the five phases of recovery from the crisis according to the same McKinsey strategy (in the English source they all begin with the letter R, while in Russian the initial letters will be different) (“Beyond coronavirus: The path to the next normal”, March 23, 2021. - Author's note).

1. Resolve - solution. In a crisis, something always needs to be solved. At a minimum, it is necessary to determine the extent of the damage and outline the actions and changes necessary to adapt. This phase requires an internal General Manager. He got lost among those subpersonalities that already exist - Carlson, Don Quixote, Secretary Bird and others. It is the General Manager in the first phase who must decide what, exactly, you should do, how much to do and when. I think that your General Manager has already initiated some of your changes today: for example, he led you to read this book.

2. Resilience - stability, resistance. In any crisis, we are subject to many different pressures and influences, as if a strong hurricane is passing through us. It is important that we are not blown away and carried away. That is, the second phase of overcoming the crisis: no matter what happens, we must keep our feet on the ground. Something to balance or throw away for relief, something, on the contrary, to grab onto. This is partly what you and I have been doing throughout the book: working through what prevents us from holding on, and gaining what helps us withstand the hurricane.

3. Return - return or restart. This means, as in the example with the theory of three horizons, that we end up leaving part of our life exactly as it was, and rethinking part of it. It’s like the reset button on a computer: we press it at the moment when something inside us freezes, and the system is partially rolled back and partially updated.

4. Reimagination - rethinking, re-imagining, rethinking. For example, something after a crisis is no longer available to you and will never work as it should again. Then rethinking consists of grieving, letting go, and in the empty space, perhaps something new will come, ideas from your creative part. The result of rethinking is an understanding and feeling of what exactly needs to be done differently and how. It is understanding, not action. This is a mental process in which we have not yet moved into action.

5. Reform - reassembly. That phase that I have mentioned so much already in this book. In this phase, we act: we reassemble our crisis puzzle so that it becomes better. For example, we took into account our strengths and weaknesses, came up with new ideas in the fourth phase and understood where and how we should live differently. Now we can build our behavior based on understanding and sensations.

In all these phases, it is very important to ensure that you do not perceive the world as black and white. In a crisis, as we remember, our psyche has a strong temptation to simplify everything: if it’s not good, then it’s bad, if some people don’t do what they should, then they’re assholes and stinkers, etc. We fall back to hyper-generalizations, Therefore, in all phases, from the first to the fifth, you need to remember that everything is much more complicated than it seems. Shades of gray are critically needed, not just black/white, bad/good, right/wrong. There are a lot of points in the spaces between the extreme poles, they are really needed, they cannot be missed. If you remember this, you will be able to resist your mind's attempts to simplify everything and you will be able to solve problems not only in the simplest (and perhaps not the best) way, but will consider different options.

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Family crisis

The psychology of relationships between an unmarried couple is different from that of married people. Although there is much in common between these two types of relationships, the nature of their psycho-emotional and mental state is different. The psychology of family crises is more multifaceted and wide-ranging than that of young people who are not officially registered, since they have many more responsibilities and responsibilities to each other. Married people have joint property, joint children, and are bound by law and official marriage. Therefore, it is morally and financially much more difficult for them to survive the crisis of family life.

Family psychology provides many factors that provoke turning points in the lives of spouses. How does the intensity of marital passions manifest itself?

• Reducing the level of sexual activity and physical attraction to each other.
• Loss of desire to like each other.
• The emergence of quarrels over raising children.
• Differences of opinion, loss of common views, interests, values.
• Misunderstanding of each other's feelings.
• Mutual irritability from actions or conversations in the family circle.
• Manifestations of selfishness.
• Loss of the need to share your joys and successes with your legitimate other half.
• The wife's relationship with her husband's mother.
• The husband's relationship with his wife's mother.
• The wife's dissatisfaction with the fact that (in her opinion) her husband cannot achieve anything in life.
• The husband's dissatisfaction with the fact that his wife is always busy with business, does not find time to pay attention to him, does not take care of herself (or does it too zealously, while spending the lion's share of the family budget).

Often, turning points manifest themselves in the form of crises in family life over the years. Modern psychology counts the period of possible downturns in relationships, starting from two to three months after the wedding day and ending with the twenty-fifth anniversary of marriage. The main boundary dates are six months, a year, the date of birth of the first child, the fifth anniversary, and the decade of marriage. These are unique stages of restructuring and psychological reorientation, reassessment of the values ​​of one or each spouse. Plus, the previously described age-related turning points separately for men and women also help to differentiate family crises in a married couple by year.

Psychology of the financial crisis and its impact on humans

Another type is the moment of financial insolvency. Probably every representative of modern society has at least once been in a situation where he was laid off or quit his job, when he became financially dependent on his parents or spouse. Moments of lack of money often become the reason for the development of a crisis state in any representative of society in the early or late stages of his life. They are just as difficult to deal with as age-related or family crises. But it is worth paying attention to the fact that all this is fixable, that any negative situation can be overcome in order to prevent the harmful consequences of the effects of crisis oppression.

Recipe for illness

When identifying a psychological crisis in adult life, there is only one purpose: to learn to live without looking back at the past and try not to draw parallels with the lives of other people. We are all individuals. That's why we're interesting. Understanding the life experiences you have gained and accepting the mistakes you have made along the way will help you overcome difficulties.

It is important to be able to set achievable life goals and correctly determine priorities so as not to experience acute frustration in the future. Such stages are characterized by making rash, hasty decisions.

For example, a person can quit his job, leave his family, grow a beard, and even become a monk. Psychologists advise in such a situation to give yourself time to think (1 month), and then write down on a piece of paper the expected pros and cons of the decision being made. They say it helps

Such stages are characterized by making rash, hasty decisions. For example, a person can quit his job, leave his family, grow a beard, and even become a monk. Psychologists advise in such a situation to give yourself time to think (1 month), and then write down on a piece of paper the expected pros and cons of the decision being made. They say it helps.

What does a crisis mean for a person?

The onset of a turning point, developing in an undesirable direction, provokes the emergence of many negative factors and negative consequences for a person. It can be:

• Moral oppression.
• A state of melancholic dissonance.
• Depression.
• Stress.
• Breakdown.
• Development of alcoholism.

It is very important to be able to get out of problematic situations and prevent the development of the listed behavioral patterns. After all, each of them together can lead to very unpleasant consequences, even thoughts of suicide.

Symptoms of the turning point

You can notice the beginning of the crisis by the characteristic symptoms that began to appear suddenly:

• causeless feeling of anxiety, uncertainty;
• need for solitude;
• difficulties in communication;
• loss of life goals;
• panic when thinking about the future;
• desire for destructive behavior;
• aggressiveness, conflict.

The appearance of one symptom does not mean the beginning of a turning point. But the combination of signs and the corresponding age is a reason to take a closer look at your condition.

How to deal with everyday crises

To overcome the overwhelming feeling of being controlled by the crisis, you need to be able to think constructively and act immediately. If you sit with your hands folded, it is difficult to achieve anything.

First, you need to find the cause of the problem. Searching and finding the source of all troubles will help you deal with them faster.

Secondly, you need to analyze the situation objectively, try to look at it from the outside. Perhaps, having seen the state of things in a different light, you will be able to discern your own mistakes that provoked a family crisis, or see the resolution of the situation in the predetermination of some specific way out of it.

Thirdly, you need to be loyal to yourself. People should accept nitpicking about their appearance and their age-related changes more easily. Aging is a natural process. It should be celebrated not with worries, but with attempts to live every moment of life with dignity and happiness. Then there will be no need to look for ways to overcome the crisis.

Group influence

The process of developing crisis psychology was influenced by many practitioners. Their experience allowed us to select effective techniques to help cope with stress and its consequences. The author of several works on crisis psychology, L. Pergamenshchik, offers a method called psychological debriefing.

The principle of debriefing is to bring together victims who have experienced similar traumatic experiences into a therapeutic group. Being in the company of people who are forced to cope with similar situations helps a person feel freer. He can:

• share experiences without fear of judgment;
• count on understanding;
• be extremely frank.

The support of other group members is a powerful incentive that gives strength to overcome trauma and make plans for the future