First thing, try to defuse it with humor. It's free unless the IRS gets wind of you practicing unlicensed silliness.
If you want to stay calm in a high-risk situation, try tactical breathing first.[0] Worry about playing with "mental models" second.
Another technique soldiers use in war is to assume they are dead until the war ends. It's much less stressful and more survivable. Also, there's no point worrying about things that are actually far beyond one's own control.
Another point to consider is the calmest individual typically has the most power in an interaction and has the advantage of clearest thinking.
I tried to look at it from the writers perspective and lost most of my humor in the process. Let me try describe the feeling in a way you could understand..... I felt an overwhelming emptiness inside and thought, this must be what daemons feel like after the exorcism. (just trying not to have my malice misinterpreted as incompetence here)
If I see people lacking the strength (both mentally and physically) to accomplish something I always suggest screaming as loud as you can. There is nothing as funny as leaving the room to scream in the hallway. Preferably loud enough that everyone inside the room can hear it.
While it was b.. bad, I really enjoyed the article and the author is right. It is important to teach other people see things from my perspective.
I was also thinking, these mental models are good as a checklist of sorts that you can only apply when you're calm. Getting to the calm state first is what's difficult.
Not assuming malice in general is probably the only helpful thing in there to stay calm.
Tactical breathing (I never knew it was called that) helps me, too.
Even something that simple can be difficult to apply in the heat of the moment, that's why the technique has to be as simple as "just inhale and exhale slowly". Everything moderately complex won't help.
I had never heard that the "assume you're already dead" tactic was used by anyone.
I can vouch that it works, I was born with several heart defects and spent so much time as a child and through my early 20s going in to surgeries and procedures with uncertain outcomes that being "already dead" has been my thing, a kind of "I was born already dead" mental headspace, I still think that way effectively 100% of the time and as a result I'm pretty hard to be derailed by mundane problems, fears and slights that seem to get under the skin of others.
I wonder why they don't continue that mindset when they get home, I wonder if any military psychologists have identified downsides? A few different periods of my life I've gone to therapists and they don't seem to know care about that headspace once they carefully confirmed that I'm neither suicidal or a high risk taking individual.
If you want to stay calm in a high-risk situation, try tactical breathing first.[0] Worry about playing with "mental models" second.
Another technique soldiers use in war is to assume they are dead until the war ends. It's much less stressful and more survivable. Also, there's no point worrying about things that are actually far beyond one's own control.
Another point to consider is the calmest individual typically has the most power in an interaction and has the advantage of clearest thinking.
Beware the fury of a patient man. - John Dryden
0. https://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmcphc/Documents/health-promo...