When Distance Turns Into Crisis

Distance has always been the main supporting character in my life story. I have consistently grown up with some form of distance between my family and my support network. As a child, I lived in Australia far away from my father for thirteen years and lived without my parents as I continued to move into adulthood and started working. I was in a long-distance relationship with one partner, which aggravated my anxiety and opened up issues that I faced towards building trust and autonomy.

After experiencing my recent crisis living and working in Shanghai, I’ve come to recognise that distance can enable me to arrive in a crisis state that’s highly negative and debilitating. This personal reflection further emphasises the importance of de-escalation and coping mechanisms in crisis intervention.

In this personal statement, I will describe the crisis in detail that I experienced living and working alone in Shanghai. I will also review the positive gains that I received as part of this challenging experience, informing the specific coping mechanisms and techniques needed for individuals to receive as part of crisis intervention work.

Experiencing Multiple Crisis Episodes

Between July to December of 2020, I experienced an acute situational crisis as I was doing an individual work secondment in Shanghai, China. Initially, the secondment would only take place for a month, but I was asked to stay and live there for a total of six months for work.

Living in Shanghai for work would be the fourth time I moved to another country and was far from my support network. Because I hadn’t lived there in such a long time, I also didn’t have any existing friends. Simultaneously, I had just started a relationship with my partner and therefore had to begin our journey together long-distance. All of the following factors lead to me experiencing a series of crises that affected my work and my capacity to regulate my emotional wellbeing. Throughout my time in Shanghai, there were crisis episodes where I felt destabilised by my circumstance and could not retain my emotional composure to cope with the event independently. I experienced several feelings, mostly this sheer volume of loneliness and distance between myself and my support network back in Singapore. Loneliness felt like a gaping vortex that was always apparent every time I would finish work and head back to my hotel room to rest. I didn't feel like I had enough support around me to deal with the anxiety and difficulty of living alone again.

I wasn't in full control of my behaviour because of my inability to stabilise my crisis episodes. Because of my destabilised mental state, the crisis episodes also led me to do irrational behaviours which made things difficult for my partner. I was always looking for attention and getting more anxious if I knew that my support network was busy doing other things, and I wasn't there. My work would often get distracted by thoughts of going back to my hotel room on my own with nothing to do, which I didn't particularly want to experience and tried to run away. This further highlights the ways uncertainty can increase the chances of experiencing anxiety (Merendino, 2020).

Because of my disequilibrium state, my thought processes were impaired and irrational. I suddenly became convinced of certain automatic beliefs that affected my perception of working in Shanghai and being far away from the support network. Living and working in Shanghai was seen as a harrowing and challenging experience as if my office was punishing me. I also felt I was being ignored by my friends and support network when I didn't hear back. This negative feedback loop continued overtime, escalating and repeating itself until it became the new homeostasis for me as I continued to try and cope with the crisis.

Coping With the Difficulty

After a few months in Shanghai, I came out of the difficult experience by better utilising my support system and using my past experience as internal strengths.

Coping mechanisms needed to be better defined, as my crisis state continued to repeat and worsen without any opportunities for me to stabilise my emotions and cognition (James & Gilliland, 2013). One of the first things I did was open up with my partner on the difficulties and crisis episodes. From there, we made up a plan to schedule a time for us to contact each other and check in regularly. Any impromptu calls can also occur if I knew that my anxiety and episodes would suddenly lash out. The coping plan took some discipline from both parties as it meant that we had to stick to the timings and ensure that we were both available, but it’s been known that consistent communications help stabilise long-distance relationships (Merolla, 2012). We also developed a pre-emptive plan that outlines what my partner needed to do to help de-escalate and bring me back to a more mobilised and stable state.

Recalling and referring to memories and previous experiences of being alone also helped combat my irrational thinking process towards feeling lonely in Shanghai. I had to continuously remember that I had lived and created many joyful and positive memories wholly alone and without someone’s dependency on my support system. Recalling these memories also reminded me of the value of seeking new friendships and socialising with others. Because of this, I made a point to connect with other people, even though I was only going to stay there for six months. Creating new friendships with a few people also helped stabilise my mental state, and not feel like I'm missing out by being far away from my support network.

Finally, I recognised the circumstances and triggers that would potentially cause me to have another crisis episode where I would feel anxious and destabilised. Throughout the coping journey, I realised that having nothing to do was a significant factor in enabling my cognitive function to be impaired and run into a cycle of negative thinking and perception. To counter this, I made sure that there were several focal activities that I would use to make myself feel busy and productive every weekend. These activities included hobbies such as writing and drawing, as well as socialising with others.

The Importance of Resilience and Memory

The most important learning that I received coming out of the challenging experience is the importance of building your internal resilience and the power of using your existing resource of memories to help reframe the narrative and intervene in the crisis. Resilience can be a powerful source of strength for individuals to navigate through stress and hardships (Coutu, 2002). It continues to be a point of focus for counsellors and even companies starting to see the value of resilience in managing employees' mental well-being. During my crisis event living and working in Shanghai, my initial experience with the crisis made it difficult for me to stabilise myself and have the capacity to strengthen my resilience and also receive it from my support network. This further highlights the importance of de-escalation and why immediate and successful crisis intervention allows the individual to be stable. It creates more access for them to act and enable their resilience to take over as they navigate the issue.

Being able to recognise pre-crisis moments of strength and success can also become an additional source of power. That's because these moments can support individuals experiencing a crisis to reframe their dysfunctional thinking pattern and empower their capability in overcoming the difficulty. When I was experiencing the crisis episode, I couldn’t think clearly and recall the success that I had already achieved living alone in China and travelling alone to other countries. It wasn't after I tried to properly navigate through the hardship, that I could identify these memories again and use them to reaffirm my ability to live far away from my support network without feeling lonely

Even though I had always gotten used to distance and its role in my life, my recent crisis highlights how easy it can be for an individual not to recognise their own existing experiences and strengths when they’re in a destabilised state. Even though it was a challenging experience, living and working in Shanghai allowed me to reaffirm my resilience and capabilities and have more oversight on what triggers my anxiety and negative thinking. It also brings to mind the importance of resilience when dealing with individuals experiencing crises. I can only hope that as I continue to live my life, I can be more prepared on how distance and circumstances can shape how I experience my environment and situation moving forward.

Bibliography

Coutu, D. L. (2002). How resilience works. Harvard business review, 80(5), 46-56.

James, R. K., & Gilliland, B. E. (2013). Crisis Intervention Strategies (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.

James, R. K., & Gillilland, B. E. (2003). Theories and Strategies in Counseling and Psychotherapy (5th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Merendino, A., & Sarens, G. (2020). Crisis? What crisis? Exploring the cognitive constraints on boards of directors in times of uncertainty. Journal of Business Research, 118, 415-430.

Merolla, A. J. (2012). Connecting here and there: A model of long‐distance relationship maintenance. Personal Relationships, 19(4), 775-795.