Dashboard › Module 2 › Lesson 5
Build Your Crisis Survival Card
A skill you have to remember during a crisis is a skill you'll lose during a crisis. When you're flooded, you don't recall — your memory for clever techniques goes right out the window. So we're not going to rely on your memory. We're going to put your skills on a card that you build now, calm, and read later, flooded. This is the deliverable for the whole module.
Full teaching script
Hook
A skill you have to remember during a crisis is a skill you'll lose during a crisis. When you're flooded, you don't recall — your memory for clever techniques goes right out the window. So we're not going to rely on your memory. We're going to put your skills on a card that you build now, calm, and read later, flooded. This is the deliverable for the whole module.
Why a card
Why a physical card, or a note on your phone? Because when you're in it, you don't recall — you read. There's a reason cops and pilots and surgeons all carry checklists for high-stress moments: nobody's memory is reliable under that kind of load, no matter how smart they are. Your card is your checklist for the worst ten minutes. You don't have to be clever in the moment. You just have to read your own card and do what it says.
Fill the three sections
Pull out the Crisis Survival Card worksheet. Three sections. Section one: your two go-to TIPP moves — probably cold water and paced breathing, but whatever works for you. Section two: your three ACCEPTS moves — the specific ones you circled, in your words, things you'll actually do. Section three: your one radical-acceptance sentence — "this is real, and I can handle what's real." Concrete, personal, ready. Not theory. Your actual moves.
Add your people
Then add one more thing: one name and one number. The person you'll text or call. Because the room is not soundproof — we build that whole wall later, but it starts right here on this card. When you're in it, you should not have to also decide who to reach out to. Decide now, write it down, so in the moment it's already answered.
Place it
Last step, and people skip it: put the card where the crisis actually happens. Not in a drawer you'll never open. In your wallet. On your phone's lock screen. On the nightstand. The card only works if it's there when the wave hits. A perfect card in a drawer is useless. A decent card in your pocket saves the night.
Deliverable
So that's your module deliverable: build your Crisis Survival Card now, and put it somewhere you'll actually have it at 2 a.m. Two TIPP moves, three ACCEPTS moves, one acceptance sentence, one person to reach. And remember — if you're ever in real danger, the card says 988 or 911 first. That's wall two standing. In module three, we move from surviving the moment to changing the pattern over time: emotion regulation.
Slides / on-screen
Do this now
So that's your module deliverable: build your Crisis Survival Card now, and put it somewhere you'll actually have it at 2 a.m. Two TIPP moves, three ACCEPTS moves, one acceptance sentence, one person to reach. And remember — if you're ever in real danger, the card says 988 or 911 first. That's wall two standing. In module three, we move from surviving the moment to changing the pattern over time: emotion regulation.
So that's your module deliverable: build your Crisis Survival Card now, and put it somewhere you'll actually have it at …