Check-in with yourself then write down something specific you can do in the next week to prioritize you. When you discover you’ve neglected a certain aspect of your life, create a plan for change. Are you getting enough sleep and exercise?.Over the next few days, reflect on how well you’re taking care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally: It’s impossible to give from a depleted state, and in order to keep taking care of everyone who depends on you, you need a self-care regimen. As a result, they avoid it and are left feeling overwhelmed, tired and ill-equipped to handle life’s inevitable challenges. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, many caregivers think that self-care is selfish or a luxury. Self-care is vital for building resilience toward stressors in life that you can’t eliminate. This is a conscious act that you take in order to promote your physical, mental and emotional health. It’s easier to control negative thoughts and lower stress when you also practice regular self-care. Rather than remaining hurt or angry, come from a place of strength and understanding. If you frequently take on other people’s problems, you may be facing an opportunity to say “no.” Instead of building a case for the perceived injustice, use the situation to grow. ![]() Try to empathize with the other person’s point of view, and then let go. Is it possible there’s another side to the story? Maybe it wasn’t as personal as you initially thought. When you notice that you’re stuck thinking about something, try to see another perspective. Write in a notebook for 15 furious minutes and then see how you feel. Instead, ask a good friend, “Can I have five minutes of your time?” and then leave it at that. And while it’s true that talking things out and getting difficult emotions “off your chest” can have a therapeutic effect, complaining all day long has the opposite effect. “Venting and complaining are good!” one of my coworkers used to say. When rumination makes you feel stuck, there are a few ways to catch yourself and refocus: It’s nearly impossible to enjoy time at home when your mind is stuck in overdrive. It’s difficult to provide great customer service to the next caller when still angry at the last one. ![]() Many Type-A overachievers fall into such thinking traps, spinning themselves into a frenzy of negativity and anxiety. How much time do you spend each day neurotically ruminating over something that happened to you or someone you know, constantly replaying the event in your mind and dwelling on the injustice of it all? As you do this, what happens to your stress level? And your capacity to think clearly, or focus on other, more productive thoughts? To remain flexible and resilient during fast-changing times it helps to watch what you think and to take great care of yourself. It’s the measure of how we adapt to fluctuating situational demands, shift our perspective, and balance competing desires and needs. Psychological flexibility means holding our own thoughts and emotions a bit more lightly and acting on longer-term values and goals rather than short-term impulses, thoughts and feelings. By improving our psychological flexibility, we can reverse these effects, even during a pandemic. That’s the challenging news.Īlso contained in this statistic is the opportunity. These effects have been shown to cause diminished work performance, depression, substance abuse and lower quality of life. ![]() They grow more emotionally distant (or numb) over time, are more prone to negative thinking and rumination, are more apt to get angry, and are less able to manage intense emotions. ![]() That is, 9-1-1 dispatchers who are rigidly stuck in habitual ways of thinking experience more stress as a result of the job. The study found a significant correlation between respondents’ level of psychological inflexibility and their experience of symptoms of stress, including dissociation, neuroticism, anger and emotional dysregulation. Michelle Lilly and Christy Allen highlighted both an immediate challenge and an opportunity. While the evidence is clear and the effects striking, one needn’t quit the job they love in order to escape this grim reality. Vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout result from being exposed to the suffering of others, manifesting as lower feelings of life satisfaction, depression, anxiety, weight gain and other negative health effects. Studies that explore the mental and physical risks posed by the cumulative stress of a 9-1-1 career provide evidence of what 9-1-1 professionals have known for years: the job takes a toll. Vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout result from being exposed to the suffering of others.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |