Page 37 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

6 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

through difference, and actively seeking better understanding of oneself
and the other’s point of view. Effective negotiation of conflict, the cultiva-
tion of common goals and interests, the use of tact and diplomacy, and
sharing and development of resources helps to bolster a healthy collab-
orative process. It is useful to make good collaborative practice routine,
through regular meetings and the use of explicit contracting to address
differences effectively, rather than by conflict and flight. It is easier to be
angry than hurt. Collaboration is also facilitated by the adoption of a com-
mon system for communication and organizational structure to avoid a
Tower of Babel effect. In the United States, responder organizations may
all share the National Incident Management System (NIMS), or Incident
Command System, in order to facilitate collaboration (FEMA, 1997).
While this may seem overly simplistic, what follows is much easier to
write about in a state of relative calm than to deploy in any crisis, real
or perceived. Human beings, like other animals, tend to act to relieve
distressing feelings, and they act quickly, often without the capacity to
reflect (Van der Kolk, Roth, Pelcovitz, Sunday, & Spinazzola, 2005). As
discussed in more detail below, impulsive action may lead to destructive
repetition, and this is no less true in the oft-times threatening and stress-
ful circumstances surrounding disaster situations and efforts to work with
other people who have different goals and interests; both situations con-
tain elements of the uncertain and unknown. However, and this is key to
collaboration, human beings have access to speech, formulated linguistic
discourse, as a form of behavior, alternative to more destructive action.
We can learn, when faced with the feeling of threat and when under dis-
tress, to act by speaking and speaking only when one is ready emotion-
ally, spiritually, and cognitively, even though this may seem to be more
anxiety-provoking than other forms of action. Developing the capacity to
speak calmly and without distortion, and eschewing other more destruc-
tive and less contained forms of action and interaction is essential for sus-
tainable collaboration.
What impedes collaboration? Generally, when seeking to understand
how to make something work better, it is useful to identify and avoid com-
mon pitfalls. Therefore, in a basic sense, anything that interferes with the
above helpful elements will impede collaboration. This is true, whether
they are absent or present, but in an inauthentic “checking the boxes” way
or other disconnected form. Actively present factors that disrupt collabo-
ration include poor communication practice, especially inability to openly
discuss, when appropriate; any unpleasant feelings and perceived or actual
slights; or a negative, hostile, or oppositional stance, whether mutual or