Ep. 57: Creating a Crisis Cycle Plan in Behavior Support - Part 12 of the FBA Mini-Series

Planning a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) for high-intensity behaviors? This episode walks you through the 7 stages of the Crisis Cycle—and how to use it as a practical tool in your FBAs and behavior plans.

We’re talking real-world escalation, de-escalation, and everything in between: what the student actually does, how staff should respond, and how to keep your team aligned in high-stress situations.

🔑 Key Takeaways
• The Crisis Cycle is a predictable escalation pattern—and one of the most useful tools in behavior planning
• Define what each stage looks like for your student, not just in theory
• Staff strategies matter—wrong support at the wrong time can make it worse
• Always include recovery and exhaustion—don’t rush the student back to work
• Use the plan proactively and reflectively (after incidents)
• Invite input from families and staff, and update the plan as the student grows
• Trauma-informed care matters—touch and tone can trigger more than you realize

📚 Resources and Ideas
📝 Free Crisis Cycle Visual: Download here
📌 Related Episodes:
• Ep. 51 – Antecedent Strategies → abainschool.com/ep51
• Ep. 55 – Building Behavior Plans: Behavior Teaching → abainschool.com/ep55

Join Us...
🎙 Next Episode: Bridging the gap between behavior specialists and teachers
🌟 Subscribe: Don’t miss upcoming episodes on practical strategies and must-have resources for behavior support!
📢 Share this episode with a teacher, BCBA, or administrator looking for fresh approaches to special education and behavior analysis!
💬 Let us know how YOU use the crisis cycle in our Facebook group  @TheMisfitBehaviorists
📚 Connect: Follow us for more tips, tools, and discussions about all things behavior and education.  

Join the Facebook group for collaboration and freebies: The Misfit Behaviorists

😍 More, you say? We’re here for you!

• Apple podcast | The Misfit Behaviorists
• Instagram | @‌themisfitbehavioristspodcast
• YouTube | @‌themisfitbehaviorists

👋 Find us!

• Audra | ABA in School
• Caitlin | Beltran’s Behavior Basics
• Sami | B.A.S.S.

🖱️ Rate, Review, Like & Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode! Showing this love helps us get out to more educators out there!

Transcript

Ep. 57: Creating a Crisis Cycle Plan in Behavior Support Part 12 of the FBA Mini-Series

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast miniseries this round. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Sami Brown here to bring you fun and functional advice for creating and implementing behavior plans. Let's get started. 

[00:00:16] Audra: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorists as we are now on Step, I think it's 12 of our FBA miniseries here with Sami, and we are talking about the crisis cycle today. So the crisis cycle is something that isn't necessarily obligatory like in an FBA or a BIP that you're creating, but she and I have worked on this for a long time and I've seen it other places too in different ways. But I think this is a really good way to synopsize, especially for a student who goes through a full crisis cycle and not just has small behaviors or something, but usually if you're doing a full FBA and BIP, these are usually for more significant behaviors, especially the ones that we as BCBAs are called in to do.

[00:00:59] And so what I find is that this crisis cycle is a really good synopsis of everything that we've talked about throughout the whole process, all the behaviors and all the strategies in one easy one to two page reference sheet for all of our staff to use. So Sami, is that kind of what you felt about this kind of cycle that we've used?

[00:01:19] Sami: Yeah, and to be honest, I feel like the crisis cycle and the development of it is one of my favorite parts because it really takes out all of the confusion of what's happening with the student when, if you can see it, so they say you can measure it, you can manage it, if you can see what's happening, you know when to intervene. "Oh, I know where we're headed." So it's just an important place to be able to take all of the behaviors and divide them up onto what we would say are all the different levels, which I'm sure you're gonna touch on. 

[00:01:48] Audra: The crisis cycle is that predictable pattern that you're talking about of getting that escalating and deescalating pattern, 'cause when you're, if you've ever been in a crisis, you know that you begin to feel in crisis yourself. And it's really hard when your brain starts to shut down thinking logically "oh, what was in the plan? What are we supposed to do? The students doing this? What am I supposed to be doing to support them?" It's really hard to get those things in mind when you're starting to feel the anxiety that you do feel as well. And so this is a really good way to get that all put in place. Now, the crisis cycle, all these stages and stuff, we obviously didn't come up with this. I think when I first started doing this many years ago, there were like three or four stages and then they expanded to five stages. And whether you do CPI or Ukeru or how do you pronounce that? Ukeru or, I've done several other ones. So you're probably using some sort of crisis prevention strategies, and they usually have a system. I think the latest one is seven steps, which is what we're gonna go through today. And I find it's really some of the steps can gonna be combined with certain students, but I do find having all seven of them and the different meanings behind them is important. So I thought we'd go over each of those stages, what they look like and what you might think about doing in that moment. 

[00:03:00] Sami: And I think what you had said too about how staff alone responds to specific behaviors, one of the most important part of that cycle is what those strategies are for staff, because they may come in at a higher level to respond to a lower level behavior and actually create even further of an escalation.

[00:03:18] Audra: That is perfect. Stage one we're talking about calm. You know that student, they're in a relaxed state, they're open to learning and engagement. Baseline feeling, when they're having a good day, this is that stage one. What your support strategies here are gonna be like positive reinforcement opportunities for social interactions. This is where you're gonna be teaching, providing new materials, new things to work on. But that's like your baseline. Everything's going great. 

[00:03:46] Sami: That's the most important part is that's the level that you're teaching because if you're trying to teach a skill at any of these other levels, likely not gonna be successful.

[00:03:55] Audra: That's the same for us too. When we get outside of that calm state, even when we go into sort of an anxious state, we stop being able to learn things as well. And so this is really just human behavior and we're just talking specifically about kids and young adults in crisis, but this really is for all of us. We all have these cycles, although I don't usually throw chairs through windows, maybe I could get me up and anxious enough, I just might do that. 

[00:04:18] Sami: Please don't. 

[00:04:18] Audra: Okay, so stage two then is anxiety. When they're starting to show signs of stress or worry, what we've called it, is that passive non-compliance. You're starting to see the shutdowns, it's gonna look different in each student, but usually I've seen bodies start to pull into themselves. Grumbly, yeah, grumbly voices, lower tones. You might start to get some refusals, that type of stuff, but at this point, they're not like acting out, they're not throwing chairs or anything. They're just starting to feel that sort of that passive non-compliance, or you're gonna have students who don't say anything. So you have a chatty person who's in stage one and then they stop talking. That's usually a sign that the anxiety's starting to go up. 

[00:04:59] Sami: So it might be picking or nail biting or a lot of fidgeting. 

[00:05:03] Audra: And then strategies here you might include providing reassurance allowing breaks, using calming techniques. If it's like a task or something, here's a good time to switch up the task or offer to do it a little bit differently. What you're trying to do here and from here on is avoid the continuation down the stages. So if you're in a calm state, you're providing new things to do, or new work, whatever it is. If you start to get into stage two or higher, your goal now is to go backwards. So anything that you can do, and that doesn't mean giving in to the student. That means, what could we do to be supportive and a change in the environment so that they can be successful so they don't continue down that stage? 

[00:05:41] Sami: And also making a conscious choice at that moment to not go toe to toe. Is this something that really warrants me to intervene on? If it's a quiet refusal and their head is down for a minute or two, but then they pop back up and they're just listening, but they're not engaged, maybe that's not the exact moment to go toe to toe and draw out more of their behavior.

[00:06:01] Audra: Yes, that is perfect. so stage three we have defensive, and Sami and I have used in this term kind of the active non-compliance. So here they're getting a little bit more vocal. Their body posturing might, they might stand up, they might do a little bit more of the movement things. They're being more active in their non-compliance, so they might be offensive. They might refuse to comply verbally or again with their body. Here in this stage now they're starting to move forward, and so our support now is going to be more like, first of all, acknowledging the students' feelings. I think that's really important, maintaining that calm and neutral tone. Offering choices. You can do this at any point. Offering choices is a wonderful skill for us to use 'cause we wanna reduce that resistance from the student while still getting our goal going towards the goal that we have.

[00:06:52] Sami: And not getting into that power struggle 'cause they may be looking for a fight. Sometimes they're feeling those big feelings and they don't know how to release it in a productive manner. And so they might try to kind of needle, so to speak. 

[00:07:05] Audra: So stage four would be risk behavior. So here is when the behavior starting to escalate to a point where the student may engage in risk taking actions. So interventions here we're talking about prioritizing safety such as removing triggers, moving stuff outta the way, very discreetly utilizing safety plans.

[00:07:24] Sami: I was just laughing 'cause my favorite is when people are like, oh, okay, and they start taking their lanyards off, like putting their hair in a ponytail. It's like you're saying it's go time and it's not quite go time. And so using that discreet part of having a silent code, people that are all working together might know that this means I'm gonna need somebody, a second person or whatever it might be, but not being overt with your responses. 

[00:07:50] Audra: When I was in a clinic, we had a student in particular had a lot of risk behaviors but was very astute to what was going on. And so we would have code words like, somebody would stick their head out of the room that they were working and say, "it looks like it's raining." "It looks like it might start snowing." That means help! And I'm going through stage four and five quickly because that stage of risk behavior to crisis can really bleed into, and we've had a lot of students that go from stage two or three up to crisis very quickly. 

[00:08:20] And there's a very subtle difference between that kind of risk behavior and into full crisis where we're talking about real safety plans, so that is what we're talking about next. So that stage five is crisis where that level indicating the potential crisis situation is requiring immediate intervention from us. We're talking about imminent danger to self, to property, that risk behavior in stage four may not include direct contact with persons. They may be swatting or whatever. They may be engaging in behavior that maybe out in the community, might get them in really trouble, but they're maybe not hitting directly a person or, I've had students that'll slap your hand or something like that. I would consider that risk behavior and not crisis, because it's not really posing a threat. I've had little preschoolers like scratch me and I wouldn't call that full imminent danger, which is what I consider stage five crisis. And so there again, there's that subtle difference.

[00:09:15] Your risk behavior may be like verbal aggression or threats. It may be posturing, intense body language, property destruction, and that's one that's a little bit gray. If they're breaking their iPad or something, or they're throwing a chair through a window, those are gonna be two little different things. Or breaking a pencil, break pencil, I don't care. You can't be throwing your chair through the window. That's a little bit different. Then crisis is gonna typically involve that physical aggression, hands on to themselves or to other people. Dangerous behavior, and we've always called in crisis that imminent danger, if this behavior continues or is as it stands, there is going to be bodily injury, there's gonna be serious property damage, there could be police involvement. Those are the kind of things I think of as in crisis.

[00:09:58] Sami: And absolutely requires intervention.

[00:10:00] Audra: Yes. And that is the distinguishing factor is all the way up to here. We're we're figuring out, we're trying to get them around. If you get to crisis, I mean there has to be intervention. It doesn't have to be hands-on, but there has to be enough staff support, trained support. There has to be a plan in place for us to know what to do at this point, because you wanna protect the student in their crisis. You also need to protect your staff and the situation. You could have a random popup crisis behavior for a student. But if you ever get to the point where you're having crisis behaviors, we're talking about, at least afterwards, we need to talk about does this warrant an FBA behavior plan?

[00:10:32] If some random kid throws a kid a chair through the window, we don't just go, oh, he had a bad day. That's a significant behavior. So is this something we see a bunch of behavior happening beforehand over the course of weeks? Do we need to step in now? 

[00:10:45] Sami: I was just gonna say too, that just in my experience, one of the biggest misses on the team side is not coming together after an event and discussing what went well, what did they need to improve upon, did they follow the plan? And doing that self-check. And I think because people look at it as, oh, this is, I'm gonna get in trouble for something, or I didn't do it the right way, or I, we all learn and grow just as humans ourselves and even as the staff members. And so it's just important to have that debrief. Just the staff to say, okay, did we follow, okay, we did follow all of these things. And so are our responses helping to get us to where we want to go with the behavior or do we need to make some change? And it might come down to it's a one specific individual on the team needs additional training. And so it's not a pointing fingers, it's just how do we improve and our own measure how we're doing together as a team. Was the needs of the student. 

[00:11:38] Audra: That is a great point. The other thing I wanna say is like risk behavior and crisis, and I think there's a really good reason that we do it differently too, because once you've been trained in some of these crisis prevention, especially the hands on techniques, we have to be very careful we don't jump too quickly to doing that. There's been a lot of times where we've had students who have these crisis cycles and they may be in risk behavior and we may have staff that have been trained how to do hands-on and they feel very confident that they can step in and help, but they may only be in that risk behavior, that last stage there before crisis. And it is not the time. Hands-on is absolutely the last resort. There has to be a plan in place. We do not put hands on children for any reason unless safety is actually involved. There is imminent danger to self for others, or significant property destruction. I think it's really important that we emphasize that just because you've had staff trained to do hands-on, that is not what we want to jump to. And so I think that's another reason they divided out these two stages into two, I think is really important. 

[00:12:34] Sami: I think it's important too, just to keep in mind that the student is learning and growing all the time, and so what happens sometimes is we have an expectation that this is what the student does because this is what they've always done. And so this is how we're always gonna respond. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that just because, oh, we're heading that direction. We know it's gonna be this, some maybe, but it other students, it may not be, and we can inadvertently further escalate the situation. 

[00:13:01] Audra: After crisis, and we're gonna come back a little bit to crisis in a minute for a reason, but the next stage then is exhaustion. So if you've had students go through this crisis mountain that we call it, you have now reached the point where they're usually in some sort of state of physical, emotional fatigue. You might see signs of withdrawal or disengagement. At this point, our support strategies might include providing that calming environment, allowing them time to decompress, offering gentle encouragement, regaining focus. We need to give them enough time to recover from whatever it is. Each student's time to do that is going to be different. And hopefully you've had some baseline data. I've had students jump back very quickly; I've had students that the rest of the day is shot and we are not going to be able to do anything else the rest of the day if they've hit crisis.

[00:13:47] Sami: And it's really important as staff that you don't try to address the behavior at this specific stage because they're not completely out of the cycle yet. And it could very easily prime the pumps to speak to, to start the cycle over. 

[00:14:01] Audra: Which brings us into stage seven, which is returning to baseline. And that's exactly what I wanted to say is that there's still no learning going on in stage six or anything before. We're not ready for that. Even when you get to stage seven where they've decompressed and they're returning to baseline, which means they're stabilizing, they're returning to a calm state, they may be able to engage back at the classroom or the learning environment. We're still, even in this stage, we're still reconnecting with them. We are reestablishing our relationship with them because any child who's gone through crisis, especially with an adult, an authoritative figure, the relationship has been damaged, every single time that crisis happens, a relationship has been damaged.

[00:14:40] So even when you get to a return to baseline where you know they're talking again, they're playful again, be mindful, that even in that stage, you may not be ready to talk about what just happened. You are gonna wanna do all that brainstorming and that debrief type stuff with them, which is important, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute, do it at a later time when they are ready to have that conversation. Use this return to baseline time to reforge that relationship with the student. 

[00:15:05] The other thing I wanna say about that crisis mountain that we see is that once you have a student that is starting to up or down the mountain, it is so easy for them to re escalate, re escalate, that's a good way to say it. If you've had a student who's going through crisis and maybe they're starting to look like they're doing better, but anything that you have going on afterwards, you are more likely to have them return to a crisis state. So always keep that in mind that if you have returned to baseline and they seem to be doing just fine, just be mindful to reduce those expectations, everything that you're asking them to do, because it is very common for them to re escalate really quickly and easily once they've been through, especially been through a whole cycle. 

[00:15:48] Sami: I've seen that specifically when we've identified in the FBA what the function of the behavior is, and let's just say that the student's function is attention. So they've gone through this entire crisis and the now the y've gotten a ton of attention based on all the staff and the people or the peers or people. And so now everyone wants to get back to business. And they're like "wait a second. No, it's the me show. I want more of that." And so that's where you might see if the function is attention, then reengage in an escalation, so to speak, and restart that cycle because they're trying to basically have that need met again.

[00:16:21] Audra: And I think also when we go through anxious moments or crisis moments in our own lives, if you've had something happen in your life, in a day, later on the day, you're not always ready to be yourself again. It takes time for us all to recover from the psyche things that happen to us internally, emotionally, physically, and that. So that's not unique to students with behavior challenges. We have that too. So if you get a phone call in the morning and you find out your kid's in the hospital, they've been a terrible crash, and then later on in the day you find out they're fine. You're still gonna have a bad day. At least for me, it's you've still gone through that. And so I keep that in mind that the students you're working with, they've been through something, get them some time to recover and let's talk about maybe the next day, if we wanna do debriefing, let's talk about it the next day. If they're able to communicate that. 

[00:17:07] The next thing I wanna talk about, so we've gone through the crisis. I wanna talk about why we like, and you might consider doing a personalized crisis cycle, keeping these things in mind for each student that you're doing a behavior plan on. And I have found this is one of the most vital and useful things that we've done in our behavior plans. I'll put this in our show notes in the Facebook group, the visuals that we give away and stuff, because I think just having this little t chart with all of these stages is really useful. So what we do is we have each of the stage on the left and then in the middle we have what it looks like. And what I mean by what it looks like is for this specific student, what this stage looks like for that student. And it's gonna be different for every single one, even in the calm state, everybody's calm state's gonna look different. So when you're looking at a student, what behaviors are you actually observing the student do in that stage as they go through the cycle? Then on the right hand column you're gonna have, how do we support the student? Or how does staff respond? Whatever language you wanna use. So for each stage, we know, even in the calm stage, how are staff responding to this specific student in this stage. And it goes all the way down into stage seven when we're returning to baseline. So I found that this little, one to two page, depending how, intricate it is one of the most useful things that we've had. I think that this is a great little handout to give everybody on the team that has permission to see it and use it and implement it. I think it's a really good tool that we've used. 

[00:18:28] Sami: And I have found too, that if you have the blank copies of it and you send it home to the parents and have the parents fill out what does this look like at home and what do you do when that's happening, and what does it specifically look like? I've even had parents come back and after we've finalized a document, they've taken it home and put it on their fridge because even though the setting might be different, in order for us to have a complete circle and all working together for the same common goal, they may actually say, "okay, I'm seeing this behavior at home. I'm gonna follow exactly what the staff or teachers or classroom protocol is even at home, which is, I'm gonna ignore that level of behavior" or whatever the strategies are. But I think getting a lot of different people's input, the direct teacher, whoever's the direct staff that's in the room, parents and then also observation based on whoever's coming in and actually writing the FBA or the BIP.

[00:19:16] Audra: I think that's a really good point to give out those blank ones to everybody who's part of that behavior plan process and making sure that the family is part of that too, because like you said, having everybody have that input before you create the final one, that's just giving us so much good information and we've had great ideas from the family or other staff members. "I've never thought of trying that with him." And that may be part of the strategies you put into a behavior plan. 

[00:19:40] The other thing is making sure when you're filling this out, that you're using those observable signs, and so making sure you are not saying he looks anxious, or he's feeling depressed or something that you're saying specifically what you're observing. He starts flicking his pencil between his fingers and keeping his head down or whatever it's specifically that you can give. We don't know what he's really feeling inside, so make sure that those are kept with observable signs. The other things that make sure that you can, if possible, use your behavior logs and your ABC data, all that stuff that you've worked on, use that to generate some of the ideas going forward with the crisis cycle too.

[00:20:12] Another piece I wanna bring up is making sure knowing the student when we're doing this, in particular, if you're talking about trauma, being trauma informed, having students with a trauma background, because some of the strategies you want to use with those who have experienced trauma in their lives may be different. That's really going to influence how an escalation shows up and in particular, how we respond to it. So you may have a student, who has come from a very supportive, loving background, but has these behaviors, maybe they don't have specific trauma in their lives. How you're gonna react to that behavior when you have student B over here who comes from a very unstable home, whose parents, you know, yell and throw things too. If you react in a certain way, you may trigger even more that behavior in that student. So just making sure that you're very mindful of your students themselves, but also whatever background they come with. 

[00:21:02] Sami: It's hard too 'cause sometimes we can get really touchy feely and we wanna come by and we wanna put our hands on or rub backs or touch a shoulder and that might be for a specific student, gonna put them into a level of anxiety or a level of passive non-compliance because their trauma history, that's always been a negative.

[00:21:21] Audra: Yeah, that's a really good point. Thanks for the bringing that one up. I've had even students who, even in their teaching moments, their calm state, when we're working, we have to be mindful of how cheering we get, how loud we get in our cheering and reinforcement, social reinforcement for them, because it's a trigger for them for whatever reason. The point is just to really individualize for each student that not one thing works for everybody. 

[00:21:44] And then like you already touched on, just making sure your input comes from the parents as much as you can find out from there, from different staff, being able to implement across settings, and keeping in mind that some strategies you come up with, I think we talked about this last time, I talked about this last time with Caitlin, is that you may come up with a strategy that works really well and you know it does, but you put that strategy into a gen ed classroom and that doesn't work. So just be mindful whatever strategies you put in there, is appropriate for a student in whatever setting they're in.

[00:22:12] And then the third thing about getting input, making sure that you're having, if possible, the student's input when they're in a good state of mind and you have a good relationship. And it doesn't have to be you, whoever has a great relationship with the student getting an input from them, something as simple as what, "when do you feel happy? What makes you feel mad? What stresses you out? What do you like to do?" I like to use, " if you could have a whole day where nobody told you what to do, what would you be doing all day long" or "if you could design the worst day in the world, what would that look like?" And getting some of that information from the student as long as they're able to do that, I think it's really helpful. 

[00:22:46] Sami: One thing that you said too when you were just talking about staff strategies is sometimes I found people be like, "oh, I love that strategy so much. Everyone gets that strategy and you get it and you get it and" no and again, making sure it's really specific to each learner when you're design, 

[00:23:00] Audra: "you get a skittle and you get a skittle and you get a skittle", and then you know my kid doesn't like candy, so he'd be like "I don't want a skittle." 

[00:23:08] So five, just quick wrap up tips for us. So the first one, create the plan before the crisis. That's just duh, don't try to create a plan while you're in crisis and start jotting down notes. Let's really plan ahead. Now, you could have somebody else jotting down notes of what's going on when you're taking the baseline data and into stuff, but let's create the plans before the crisis so we're not in the moment trying to figure out what to do. 

[00:23:29] And then number two, be specific about what the student does, what the staff should do, and that doesn't mean you have to be super verbose. We don't want a crisis cycle handing out to staff that's 10 pages long, really keep it down as, as short as possible. I do one, maybe two pages but being specific about what the student looks like and what the staff does.

[00:23:50] And then three, don't skip that exhaustion phase. Make sure we're supporting the recovery time, making sure that we're not implementing new things to do too quickly so that we can have that re-escalation. I think that's really important. 

[00:24:03] Then four, revisit and revise the plan after every single major incident. And if you are debriefing with your staff, you should be debriefing with your staff after every single incident. It doesn't have to be the moment that happens. Just make sure you take 30 seconds even at the end of the day or the beginning before the next day starts that you check in with everybody. First of all, you need to check in that your staff is okay. They're gonna be emotionally affected by what's going on as well. So check in with them, make sure they're okay if they have input. If you didn't see the whole crisis cycle, what did you miss before you observed or after? How did the recovery take place? I think that one's really important, is like, how and when was the student able to reengage? And that will influence what we do the next time around when it happens. And then making sure you're debriefing with your admin, does paperwork need to be filled out? If you've had hands on incidents or always have that paperwork done, that we're following legal and ethical guidelines. All that stuff needs to be done afterwards. 

[00:25:02] And then the fifth one is just keep that communication open and judgment free with your team. I think that piece is really important 'cause you're going to have staff who go into crisis themselves, even if they don't exhibit it in the same way and maybe they say something or they do something that is not what we would do, but in the moment, they're in crisis. So let's just make sure that we're being judgment free and we use it as a learning opportunity, as well as with the student. Let's not pass judgment on, we don't know where their background come from or what influenced their behaviors. So just maintain that judgment free, neutral reaction to all of these incidents.

[00:25:36] Sami: 100%. 

[00:25:37] Audra: So I will create this little visual. I'll put it in the Facebook group, also in the show notes, you'll be able to click and download it from there, go and subscribe to both the podcast and the Facebook group, and chime in. We have one, maybe two more episodes of this FBA miniseries, and then we're just continuing on with whatever we wanna talk about.

[00:25:56] Intro: Thanks for listening to the Misfit Behaviorists, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.