I like to be prepared for every situation, and as most of my medical knowledge comes from TV and movies it appears a nice, hard, bitch slap across the face can calm someone (typically a woman) down in a hurry. It occurs to me, though, that just maybe there’s another way. So what do the experts recommend?
It worked great in the movie Airplane! but it usually requires a group of people with various weapons and implements to get it to work just right.
In general no, that isn’t the recommended way to calm any creature running on emotional animal instincts including a woman. As a matter of fact, that is probably the worst thing you could do. Would you simply bitch-slap a pit-bull that was snarling at you? It is basically the same thing plus more legal charges after you get hurt badly.
The best thing to do is to try to speak calmly, and back away slowly if that doesn’t work. Try to find out what may have triggered the episode and address those if you have any control over them in the calmest way possible while never blaming the person who is out of control. If it is a prolonged episode with no improvement, you could call the police or ambulance to see what needs to be done from there but usually the first steps will defuse most situations and help protect innocent bystanders.
“I’m wet, I’m hysterical, and I’m in pain!”
TLDR: I don’t know whether the shock of being slapped does work, but IME you often need to do something that shocks the person into paying attention so they can understand your information and calm down… or, in one particularly nightmarish case, yell at them movie D.I. style so they go from “windmilling danger to themselves and others” to “weeping bundle of rags” (actually calming him down took hours). This guy had needed to be tackled off me; we might have tried punching him only I don’t think either the tackler or me knew how to.
Speaking in a normal voice doesn’t seem to work, and it’s not just because I’m a “little girl” (middle-aged, but I still get called a girl, and I’m not very big); I’ve never seen it work for a guy either. When talking works, it’s got to be forceful (which doesn’t usually mean yelling, but it’s also not the normal way to address another adult).
It actually does work. It’s to shock you out of hysterics. A similar technique was to throw cold water on a person. It used to be used for kids, Dear Abby even used to recommend this technique for kids that go into hysterics.
It does work and it’s even recommend for people who have panic attacks. A technique used is to fill a bowl full of ice water and plunge your face into it. The cold will stop the panic.
It also works to shock people out of tachycardia, when it’s source is not physical.
I believe you have to clamp the jaws together as the muscles that open them are fairly weak.
Then poke their eyes.
Or is that crocodiles? That might explain why my wife is a little off with me this morning.