Video Transcript
This session was made possible by a grant from the US Department of Education called Helping Helpers Help.
Welcome to ParentGuidance.org on-demand series Navigating Crisis.
My name is Dr. Sonya Boom.
I’m Dr. Gomez. I am an outpatient clinician. I am a licensed clinical social worker. I have a doctorate in behavioral health, and I specialize in integrated behavioral health care.
I live and work in New Mexico.
I currently reside in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Today we are going to be talking about navigating crises with many different populations.
I want to start off by defining what crisis means. Crisis is defined as a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.
Crisis can show up in a somatic form where it is physical—where a person feels it in their body, where they have symptoms such as flight mode, where they want to run away from the situation; fight mode, where they feel irritable, they have an angry response.
Also, when we think about events—specific events that can lead to crisis—it can be when a person is exposed to something they’re not used to, and they have a hard time adjusting to what has happened.
And so, it varies on a spectrum of what crisis means to a person and how they experience it.
I think a lot of the signs of when a child is in crisis come down to physical signs. That would be the child wanting to be alone, the child not wanting to eat, the child not wanting to sleep.
There are other signs too in younger children, where they complain of abdominal pain or headaches.
And I think for parents to be aware of the normal day-to-day behaviors and actions of a child—when that changes—to be really in tune with how much it is changing. Are those periods getting longer? Are those headaches lasting longer? Are they happening daily now?
So those initial signs usually are very subtle, but they have to do with the day-to-day activities of that person.
And then having somebody who is able to realize that something’s just not right—something needs to be addressed.
And I may not be able to understand it or find it right now, but I know that I can reach out to somebody to help me understand it more.
