The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

We make agreements everyday. We make agreements with ourselves. We make agreements with those around us. Agreements can be deeply personal and play big part in our lives. A wedding ceremony is, in essence, an “agreement” ceremony. “Do you take…?” “I do.” Some agreements are less grand, but important at the time. “I’ll pick her up at six…”

Agreements are powerful and can generate all types of emotions. Keep an agreement and your “stock” goes up. Stay consistent and you’ll be seen as trustworthy, faithful, dependable, and so on. Break an agreement and your “stock” plummets. Consistently violate agreements and you may be seen as untrustworthy, arrogant, self-centered, lazy, and so on.

It’s often times broken – or violated – agreements create crisis in the lives of those we serve. If the initial shock and disbelief of a critical incident gives way to feelings of hurt (to include anger, sadness, worry, etc.) then consider the core of their crisis a violated agreement.

I recently worked a critical incident of a police officer that turned his weapon on his fellow officers. Everyone was shaken by the incident as the theme quickly became: “one of our own”. Whether spoken, written or silently understood – officers do not put other officers in harm’s way. I kept hearing the “code” – or agreement –that you never turn your gun on another officer. This department was in crisis. These officers were in crisis. At the core of this crisis was a violation of a deeply held and time-honored agreement within the “thin blue line”.

It’s vital for crisis supporter to understand agreements – the power of them and the violation that’s caused when broken.

I have been recommending Don Miguel Ruiz’s book: The Four Agreements for over a decade now. In this simple (but sometimes – not easy) read, Ruiz explains the power of agreements and our relationship with them.

Understanding these agreements can help us – crisis supporters – to reframe the violation. Those in crisis take things personally, make assumptions, hold back their “truth” and believe their “best” wasn’t / isn’t good enough. Whether small group “debriefings” or 1-on-1 interventions, crisis supporters have the opportunity to hear these violations and reframe with honesty and fairness.

“Humans are storytellers. It is our nature to make up stories, to interpret everything we perceive. Without awareness, we give our personal power to the story and the story writes itself. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. We see we are the authors and if we don’t like our story, we change it.”

Ruiz reminds us that we can’t control the unforeseen critical incident, but we can control – and create – the outcome of our story. Crisis supporters help facilitate the conversation that (eventually) becomes the story. When we experience a violation of agreement, the crisis supporter has the opportunity to explore and facilitate fairness in the agreements we make, the decisions we control and the story we share.

Dorie is a partner and co-founder of Crisis Support Solutions, LLC. Dorie counsels individuals and groups on various issues ranging from stress/trauma, depression/anxiety, relationship/family, grief/loss, victimization, etc. She trains coordinated and managed crisis intervention teams at multiple locations. Dorie has developed and taught courses in basic and advanced crisis intervention training programs. She is also a Compassion Fatigue Educator with the Academy of Traumatology.