Helping our patients to solve problems with the 4A’s

I’ve seen many patients, parents and kids who are stuck in “fight or flight” responses this week.

This is a simple strategy to help and “shift them”.

1. Genuine validation and normalization first.
2. Consider using the 4A’s with which to solve any problems.

1 Avoid
2 Anger/Aggression
3 Acceptance/Acknowledgement
4 Assertive with value based actions

Patients often already doing 1 and 2 i.e. fight or flight responses.

Hopefully with compassion, validation, creative hopelessness and choice point, we can shift to acceptance, acknowledgement, and assertiveness with value based actions.