Practicing Intuitive Laura Day Unpacks The 4 Crisis Response Types

Understanding how you as an individual respond to crises can help you cope with periods of collective trauma, like the one we're in the thick of right now.

The four types are anger, depression, anxiety, and denial. Most of us are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for, but there are times when our challenges overwhelm our ability to cope effectively. When that happens, we regress, and we become reactive instead of strategic. We call that "crisis."

Although everyone has a full panoply of emotions, people in crisis respond in those four different ways, corresponding to one of four "response types."

The four response types are evident even in very young children and are a product of both genetics and early experience. Your predominant type does not change over time. Each response type also has a correlated strength, or "gift." If you remember how you responded when you were overwhelmed as a child, or which reactions you have to manage, even now, when you are tired and overwhelmed, you will get a sense of your type.  

People tend to pair with compensatory types: denial with anxiety, anger with depression. Even though each is what the other needs, each is also what triggers the other. Depression can't just "get up and get it done," anger has difficulty settling down, anxiety struggles with choosing which of the many things in life to address, and denial gets easily flooded when there is too much feeling and intensity. 

Anger types need to have a lot of physical activity. They need to discharge physically when triggered. Once they do that, the same incredible energy that makes them explode can be usefully directed toward effectively building what they want. The intuitive gift of anger types is passion. These are the people who can lead, rebuild from the rubble—do the impossible. 

Depression types need to make small moves toward routine, toward self-support, and toward making use of the support around them. Once they are mobilized, they can use their incredible depth to find solutions other people would miss. The intuitive gift of depression is wisdom. When a depression type emerges, he or she emerges as a teacher.  

Anxiety types need to find small things that they can accomplish in the moment to make their situation better. They may need a distraction, perhaps helping out with someone else's pressing problem. Once anxiety types organize around real problems and solutions in manageable bits, the same hyper-awareness that makes them anxious can identify opportunities that others overlook. The intuitive gift of anxiety is awareness. Once anxiety types emerge from their terrifying fantasies, they can be visionary, preparing themselves and others for change.  

Denial types need to find ways to reconnect with feeling. This is, in a sense, the hardest type to heal comfortably because denial types deny they are in denial, and things often need to get pretty bad for them to be willing to acknowledge a problem. If you know that you are a denial type, find feeling triggers to bring you back into yourself. It might be a thought that brings you joy, a song that makes you cry, a video that makes you laugh. The same tendency to block out what is unpleasant or distracting allows Denial types to be effective in dealing with obstacles, once they see them. The intuitive gift of denial is focus. Denial types can pinpoint what actions need to be taken and execute them.  

These are just a few ways of working with the four types—and there are many more. Focus on the gift of your type because that is your unique superpower. When you manage your type and are once again present in the moment, you will find that the experience of crisis—the shattering of the status quo that crisis brings—will allow you to heal in a way that makes you stronger than you were before.