Why It’s Important To Stay Calm
Emergency situations can be very stressful. An already stressful situation can be made much worse when you don’t keep your cool. Stress affects the body in many ways. With too much stress, the body goes into fight or flight mode by overproducing cortisol—a stress hormone. This hormone can cause the pre-fontal cortex to slow down, making it difficult to think clearly and function effectively. Essentially, you have less control. Don’t crumble under pressure, keep your cool with a few of these techniques.
How To Relax
Keeping your cool can be tough. Try a few of these techniques to calm down, lower your heart rate, and increase blood flow. Take a step back and try one of these techniques to keep your cool and be more helpful than harmful in an emergency situation.
- Stop what you’re doing. Take a deep breath, squeeze all the muscles in your body simultaneously and release as you exhale. Repeat three times. This will increase blood flow, reduce stress, and help to relax you.
- Try breathing exercises. Take a minute to inhale, count to three, breathe out slowly as you count to three again. Repeat three times. Breathing deeply will help to lower your heart rate, increase blood flow, and calm you down.
- Visualize. Close your eyes for a minute and visualize that you are somewhere calming. Picture somewhere comforting like a beach, the mountains, or somewhere sentimental to you. Reduce your stress by lowering your heart rate and slowing your breathing.
How To Be Prepared
One of the best ways to avoid panicking in an emergency is being prepared. Though emergencies are not usually predictable, having some basic know-how will help you keep control in certain situations. One of the first things to do in emergency situations where someone is injured in any way—remember the ABCs. The ABCs stand for airways, breathing, and circulation. Be sure to check to see if the injured person is breathing and no airways are blocked. If no airways are blocked and they are not breathing, you may need to perform CPR. Having basic CPR skills can help you feel prepared in many emergency situations. The same goes for first aid skills. There could be a variety of reasons someone may need first aid, ranging from a minor scrape to a serious wound to a broken leg, no matter, knowing some first aid will certainly come in handy.
Prepare yourself before emergency strikes to keep your cool and make the most out of a stressful situation.
