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Experiencing Contact with a Person in Crisis
When you work with a person in crisis, you experience that person’s state of mind through a sense of feel—an awareness of how the person’s brain responds to your contact.
From Trained Response to Signs of Care
Their state of mind shifts according to a trained state, or mode, of responding to contact. External behavior may then show signs of anger, fear, or anxiety as the person senses and reacts through that trained mode. Recognizing this trained mode of response moves attention from observable signs to the way contact is experienced and organized within the person.
In the tradition of behaviorism, the body and mind are treated as the self. Human Systems Science reconsiders this dualistic view by distinguishing the brain and body through their cognitive and neural activity. This distinction makes it possible to process the experience of trained states of mind rather than become overwhelmed by a lack of feel for the experience of the neural self. The language system addresses this Crisis of Self by helping you inform the brain through a sense of feel for the experience of contact. Through that process, you recognize the stages of awareness by which your brain and body respond together. The central word organizing this process is “care.”
There is a trained part of you that says, “Stick to the program,” and there is also a part that processes the experience moving through you. The tension between these parts becomes visible as your states of mind shift and you organize insights. Signs of care emerge through the experience of the person in crisis, who may be you. Informing the brain through a sense of feel for the interaction supports self-awareness, self-actualization, and self-reflection.
Across these stages, care connects the experience of contact to the organization of insights. In each stage, information flows through signs of care and creates a state of becoming aware of environmental influences, brain-and-body connections, and brain talk—how the brain talks back. Thinking through the experience of self and another person requires care to sustain the sense and receive path connections long enough to process changes. Like a move in chess, each response develops from what has already occurred and influences what can happen next. You respond to the way the body acts, the brain feels, and the senses process signs of care, or the lack thereof.
Part Two:
How do you process the programed you?
Within this Human Systems Science framework, you process the programmed you by creating enough awareness to experience the trained state without automatically becoming that state.
Brain Thinking might be understood this way:
- Contact activates the program.
An interaction triggers a trained state of mind and its familiar brain-and-body response. - The body acts and the brain feels.
Signs such as anger, fear, anxiety, withdrawal, or urgency reveal that the programmed response is active. - Sense of feel creates awareness.
Instead of immediately following the instruction to “stick to the program,” you feel the experience moving through the brain and body. - Care sustains the sense and receive paths.
Care helps you remain in contact with the experience long enough to receive and organize its information. - You distinguish the program from the processing self.
You recognize: This is a trained state moving through self; it is not the whole of who I am as a neural; system. - You organize insights and choose a response.
Brain talk becomes available for reflection, allowing response to emerge instead of reaction simply repeating the program.
So, you do not process the programmed you by suppressing, rejecting, or erasing it. You process it by experiencing its activation, recognizing its signs, sustaining contact through care, and allowing the brain and body to organize a response that is not limited to the trained state.
