What Verbal First Aid(tm) proposes is that words can mean the difference between life and death. Based on the simple notion that the words we say (to ourselves and to one another) do matter, that they affect us both physically and mentally, there are ways to speak that make those words healing, no matter what the situation.

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Getting Out of the Wilderness Alive: Using Your Head in A Crisis.

By

Judith Acosta

Lt. Costello sat behind a large, conspicuously clean desk at the Tarrytown Police Station in N.Y. He was cool, composed, and seemed as uncluttered mentally as he was physically. The awards on his book cases and certificates on the wall attested to a long, successful career. “I paid my dues,” he smiled as he scanned the room and the work it all represented. As he saw it, however, his career really started in Vietnam when he was only a teenager serving in the U.S. Army. It was there, assigned to an armored car division sent deep into the jungle, that he learned what it took to survive physically, mentally, and emotionally.

He was on a mission in the Delta, it was summer and the temperature outside had reached upwards of 115 degrees Fahrenheit before noon. Inside the tank it was at best unbearable under normal conditions. On one particular day he still remembers with stunning clarity, it was life-threatening.

“It must have been 130 or more inside. It was hot in a way I had never experienced before. I couldn't stop sweating, couldn't drink enough, couldn't just get up and go to thebathroom. I was burning up. I don't mean that metaphorically. I was literally burning up and I had to lower my body temperature somehow or I was going to die. Funny how it didn't scare me. It was just as clear to me as the coffee in front of me now. It was a fact. I had no air conditioning. I couldn't get out of the tank. There was nowhere to go except a POW camp, if I was lucky enough to get caught and not killed right away. I remember thinking that I should have been panicking. Instead, I was utterly, crystal clear. It was in the space of such a small moment that I realized it was completely up to me. Whether I survived or not was between me and my own mind.” The lieutenant sat forward, his body compressed with the intensity of the experience, still vivid in him.

“For some reason, I thought about something I'd heard about some monks in the Himalayas, how they went outside in sub-zero temperatures and howling winds to meditate and never suffered any ill effects. They raised their own thermostats. And I figured if they could do it that way, I could lower it. To this day I don't know exactly what I did or how I did it, but I imagined cool water inside me and around me, like I was dunking myself into a cooler filled with ice or skinny dipping in the lake back home. And hell if it didn't work. I'm here. I never forgot that,” he sat back. “This,” he pointed to his head, “was my greatest weapon of all. And it has served me ever since, no matter what or where the battle.”

Survival in an Emergency: Using Your Mind

Since 9/11 the two ratings-building spin words are “survival” and “emergency.” Today, Americans are fed a regular diet of security alerts, color-coded for those who need the visual aids, preparedness strategies, complete with thousands of products one can buy for only $49.95 plus shipping and handling, and countless medications courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry to help us manage the anxiety, depression, and despair. But most of the people who anxiously watch the colors flip back and forth from orange to red, pack enormous first aid kits when they go hiking on local trails, or get into armored tanks that can put holes through mountains are “prepared” in almost every way except what scientists are now coming to believe is the most important way.

Images for Survival

And that is the way of the mind. The images we hold in our minds seem to be held in our bodies as well. What we think is what we are. What we feel determines how we heal. Dr. Larry Dossey, one of the foremost proponents of mind/body medicine, has written, “Images create bodily changes—just as if the experience were really happening. For example, if you imagine yourself lying on a beach in the sun, you become relaxed, your peripheral blood vessels dilate, and your hands become warm, as in the real thing.”

If this is even partially true, it is an astonishing statement.

The case to definitively establish the link between mind and body was opened almost 1,500 years ago when Hippocrates wrote that a person might yet recover from his or her belief in the goodness of the physician. It was continued in 1912 when one doctor reported that tuberculosis patients who had previously been on the mend, when given bad news (e.g., that a relative had passed away) took sudden turns for the worse and died. And today the data supporting the connection between thoughts and health, indeed between mental images and survival, are mounting.

Brain scans have shown that when we imagine an event, our thoughts “light up” the areas of the brain that are triggered during the actual event. Sports psychologists conducted one study in which skiers were wired to EMG machines and monitored for electrical impulses sent to the muscles as they mentally rehearsed their downhill runs. The skiers' brains sent the same instructions to their bodies whether they were doing a jump or just thinking about it.

What does this mean for a person out in the mountains who suddenly finds himself stuck in a downpour and unable to get out before dark when the temperature is expected to fall nearly 40 degrees? How does this help someone with an asthma attack in the middle of a lake or a person with a broken leg one hour from the nearest ranger station? How does this help a rock scrambler or skier have the performance of a lifetime and keep themselves calm and healthy?

What Verbal First Aid(tm) proposes is that words and the intentions behind them can mean the difference between life and death. Based on the simple notion that the words we say (to ourselves and to one another) do matter, that they affect us both physically and mentally, there are ways to speak that make those words healing, no matter what the situation. By saying the right words in the right way we are able to speak directly to the body, reduce an inflammatory response, help to slow down or stop bleeding, change the way an event is interpreted so that it is experienced differently IN the body.

What Can We Do, What Can We Say: Verbal First Aid in Real Life

Deepak Chopra begins to answer that last question when he uses the metaphor of two people in a roller coaster. The following example is an adaptation and elaboration of his story:

Two people are getting into a roller coaster. One is a young cowboy—hardly moving off the platform yet, but his arms are already in the air and he's hootin' and hollerin' with anticipation. His heart is pounding. He's smiling. The woman next to him has her hands clamped down onto the metal rod in front of her. Her heart is pounding but she is not smiling. Both are in the same seat, on the same ride, but they are clearly not experiencing the same thing. The difference? Their thoughts.

The young cowboy in the roller coaster sees that the woman next to him is nervous. He turns to her. She looks to him, her eyes wide. She says, “How can you be so relaxed?” He smiles, points to his hat, “It's my magic hat.” He takes it off his head and hands it to her. “You hold on to it while we ride, okay? It's easier to enjoy the ride when you know you've got magic with you.” Her hands loosen their grip. She takes the hat. Tentatively, she smiles.

According to medical experts, anxiety (or fear) and pain are inextricably woven together for the vast majority of people. A great deal of human discomfort comes from our anticipation of it and our perception of it. Unfortunately, there is nothing marketed as vigorously in this country as is fear. If we're not scared to death by a headline, it's a radio report, a movie, a video game, or a television show. We're literally bombarded by images and ideas that promote fear. We are propelled by it and sold by it.

If the science is correct, the good news is that we can change it on every level—from the conscious to the autonomic. When we alter our thoughts, are soothed by a kind authority, or are assured that we are in good hands, we can begin to feel the changes in our bodies—the softening of muscle fiber, the opening of bronchial tubes, the quieting of pain, the start of healing.

This is why so much of Verbal First Aid in the field is directed to the alleviation of anxiety through the development and utilization of rapport. In rapport, a person will feel, “She understands me.” “He is going to help me.” “I'm safe, now.” When we feel understood, our anxiety is reduced. And when anxiety is reduced, pain is relieved. Even if we are entirely alone, clinicians and scientists agree that what we say to ourselves matters and we can direct our thoughts so that our chances for survival are enhanced.

The Power of Rapport

Whether you're speaking to yourself or to someone else on the trail, how you approach someone mentally and emotionally is at least as important as the medical expertise you have, according to Winnie Maggiore, former Asst. Chief of Placitas Volunteer Fire Brigade, paramedic, former Asst. D.A., and now a malpractice defense attorney.

“We saw the same things in the wilderness that we saw locally—snake bites, mountain bike wrecks, breaks, falls, cardiac conditions—but the injuries in the wilderness feel worse to the patient in that he's away from familiar surroundings. Most of what we had to do in rescues was anxiety management. The first step is to let the person know you have the expertise to help. This conviction allowed us to say ‘do this' in a way that motivated compliance.”

The other major ingredient in dealing with crises on the trail, according to Maggiore, is giving people some sort of control over what is happening to them. “When we were just learning emergency medicine, we were given a course in hypnosis so it could be used in pain control, because it could be all we'd have to work with out there. The worst part for patients was being out of control so put them back in control as much as we could, gave them something positive to focus on. Panic is a patient's worst enemy.”

People normally want to reassure with blanket statements, e.g., “you're fine.” When this is obviously untrue, it's the sort of statement that breaks rapport. It's better to say, according to the experts, that the worst is over and you're there to help. Your caring presence is the cornerstone of the healing process. If you don't know what to say, say nothing and listen as you wait for help or do standard first aid. Your care can do more than you might imagine.

Mental survival—regardless of where a person is, whether that's in the extremes of battle or a backpacking expedition—is often a matter of recalling or being made aware of the resources one already has. As Lt. Costello learned the hard way, the mind is the greatest weapon of all.

Authors Bio:
Judith Acosta, LISW, CHT is a licensed psychotherapist and clinical homeopath in private practice in Placitas and Albuquerque. Her areas of specialization include the treatment of anxiety, depression, and trauma. She has appeared on both television and radio and is a regular lecturer throughout the U.S. She is the author of The Next Osama and co-author of the books, Verbal First Aid and The Worst Is Over, which has been dubbed the "bible of crisis communication."