When Does a Crisis End?

At what point does a crisis end and a new normal begin? The end of a crisis rarely involves an end of related hardship. It may not even include improved conditions. Hurricane Katrina was a crisis, but the enduring broken community was not. A cancer diagnosis is a crisis, but the ensuing long battle with cancer is not. A stroke is a crisis, but long-term hospice care is not. A crisis is brief. The aftermath may be long, hard and heartbreaking, but we don't frame it as a crisis. We relabel it as recovery or coping, even if circumstances remain dire. 


In other words, the first way crisis ends is when conditions stabilize a little, even if the new situation is worse than the old.


The second way crisis ends is when we change our perspective - when we stabilize. We can't sustain a fight-or-flight response very long. A crisis is a dramatic, sudden worsening of conditions that grabs our attention and floods us with adrenaline. However, adrenaline soon fades, and we settle into realistic assessment and planning in the new reality. Our attention wanders, even though it stays focused much longer than the passing interest of friends. Our social labels, stories, and sense of self shift. It becomes our lot in life, our genes, God's hand, luck, or an event caused by something we did or didn't do. 

We weave the crisis and aftermath into our life narrative and identity. If grieving and sensemaking succeeds, perhaps we eventually come to see the events as natural, as part of a story that defines us positively, as opposed to viewing the crisis as an aberrant lightning bolt that could not have been foreseen and should not have happened to us.

We change more than the situation changes. Crisis ends when we shift our attention and reframe the conditions. We stabilize. We accept and adapt. We bend to our altered circumstances and make the best of them. We marshal resources and begin a new normal. It feels like our crisis is ending.