welcome back to dealing with stress and uncertain times
I am Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes and this is the third installment of this series we're
talking about more strategies that we can use in order to deal with some of
the chaotic stress that's going on right now geopolitically in the stock market
with you know coronavirus and healthcare concerns environmental issues there's
just lots of stuff going on right now so how can we deal with it so we can be
happy we don't want to live our lives in a state of constant stress and anxiety
and negativity that's no way to live so some strategies include surrounding
yourself with positive supportive people don't surround yourself with Chicken
Little don't surround yourself with people who are constantly ruminating on
and ranting about what's wrong with the world and what's negative and that the
sky is gonna fall that's just going to stress you out
surround yourself with people who are creating solutions surround yourself
with people who are noticing the positive and surround yourself with
people who are just plain positive they may recognize most of us I think
recognize there are some unpleasant things going on right now but we also
can force ourselves and train ourselves to also notice the positive become
mindful of how you feel and purposeful and how you choose to use your energy if
you wake up in the morning and you're already feeling stressed out
choose how you use your energy that day what is gonna be the best course of
action to help you have the happiest day possible if you're stressed out in the
middle of the day and you notice it you know maybe yeah it used to happen to me
sometimes when I worked on a residential unit if I would notice that I was
starting to feel stressed out if I was mindful of that I might shut my door
that day because people popping in and interrupting me you know every 20
minutes was stressful and if I was already stressed out I knew that I was
more likely to respond unpleasantly when they did that so shutting my door
and setting boundaries to protect myself was a way that helped me recharge and it
also allowed me to you know not encounter
other feelings because you know if I tended to be irritable with somebody
then I might feel guilty about it and yadda-yadda a lot of extra stress there
I would just shut the door you know being mindful and setting boundaries is
really important practice acceptance I say this so often it is what it is we
can't change the past we can't forecast the future at least
not very well all we can do is accept what is in the moment and figure out how
we're going to try to improve the next moment not the next day not the next
week but what am I going to do to improve the next moment part of that is
acknowledging what is and what we have control over accepting the fact that we
don't have control over everything and allowing ourselves to feel frustration
or anxiety or whatever for the moment feelings are okay we want to be able to
feel feelings but then we need to adapt instead of holding on to those feelings
and nurturing that anger and nurturing that anxiety adapt say okay I'm angry
about this or I'm really stressed out about this what can I do to help myself
feel better in the next moment and that may be using some of those distress
tolerance skills we talked about in the last video or it may be playing with my
dog or it may be making a plan for how to address the situation if there are
aspects that I can control but that's what the adaptation is all about we need
to learn to be okay even if we don't have all the answers and a lot of the
things that I've mentioned we don't have the answers for we don't understand a
whole lot about the COBIT virus we don't know when the stock market is gonna go
up we don't know who's gonna be elected in November there's a lot we don't know
and we have to be okay with some of that ambiguity yes I would love for some of
these things to get solved so I had answers that would make me feel
homer but we don't so I need to figure out a way to deal with that ambiguity
you know understand that fretting over it isn't going to get the solution here
any faster practice impeccable self care we talked about this a little bit in the
last video make sure to eat a healthy diet your body makes the
neurotransmitters and hormones you need to feel happy healthy energized from the
food you eat you eat crappy you're gonna feel crappy you know that's just kind of
the way it is pay attention to how many stimulants you're ingesting including
caffeine nicotine decongestants those are all going to ramp up your stress
response and potentially make you feel more anxious
remember that caffeine has roughly a six hour half-life so the caffeine that you
drink at noon isn't out of your body until midnight so it's still going to
interrupt your sleep or impact your sleep quality nicotine has a much
shorter half-life but it's about two hours so if you smoke four hours before
bed then you know it'll be out of your system by the time you go to bed but if
you're smoking right before bed the stimulant effects of the nicotine are
still going to be impacting your sleep but just pay attention to some things
like that make sure to practice good ergonomics and stretch and address any
pain issues so it doesn't impact your sleep and be kind to yourself self-care
also means doing things that make us happy because it's like running a hot
bath when we are stressed it's like hot water
wide open hot water well you don't want to sit in that that's gonna scold you we
need to add the happy we need to add some cool water to it to help us relax
and calm down in order to make it tolerable self-care involves adding in
happy do things every day even if life is stressful do things every day that
make you smile be patient with yourself and others and try to eliminate shoulds
and shouldn'ts hindsight is 20:20 I should have done this yesterday
yeah well I didn't I missed the opportunity too late I can't go back to
yesterday and make it happen I can learn from it so I don't make the same mistake
twice but I can't change the past I need to
learn to accept that all right miss that opportunity it is what it is and the
shouldn'ts usually revolve around I shouldn't feel this way or I shouldn't
think this way or I shouldn't have to whatever well you know you may have to
and it may be unfair life can be unfair at times but being patient with yourself
and recognizing I don't want to do this or I don't want to have to endure this
that's very valid but you may have to
other helpful questions you can ask yourself what is my belief about this
situation you know do I believe that the pandemic is going to come to the United
States and all the schools are gonna shut down and millions of people are
gonna die and dadada okay do I believe that well let's
hypothetically say I do which I don't by the way but if I did
what are the facts for and against my belief you know let's look at the facts
here let's look at how many people how long this has been going on and how many
people in the US have gotten it so far let's look at what our protective
measures are let's look at you know the the risk of the virus spreading well
that kind of goes into the other category of a little bit dangerous but
we're getting more of a handle on it let's look at the fact that we've had
months now to start trying to find a vaccine or a cure for it so by the time
it gets to a pandemic level if it got there which we're hoping it won't then
we're that much closer to having a vaccine so looking at the facts and
recognizing what is real and what is just media induced panic is really
important identifying factors that you're failing to consider what other
things are going into this you know we'll stick with the virus for right now
yes it got really bad in China and seemingly really fast but there were it
was a lot longer before they instituted contain instituted containment
procedures other factors I'm failing to consider I'm healthy I don't smoke you
know I am relatively low risk for experiencing major negative effects from
the virus so okay I can take comfort in that I am in the middle of a rural area
which means you know I'm not going to be bows to people who are regularly
traveling because we just don't in this area of County so focusing on other
factors that basically contradict my belief that the sky is going to fall
it's really important to consider all the facts yes it's a bad virus and yes
you know if my kids had it it would be really bad mojo however what is the
likelihood am I using all or nothing or extreme words if I start saying
everybody's going to get this and we're all going to die yes those are extreme
words and those are not accurate so it's important to recognize what is accurate
and check our verbage or saying everybody who comes into contact with it
has get sick or has major complications that's not true we need to focus on what
the facts are am i focusing on the worst possible outcome well the scenario I
gave you was yeah that was probably the worst possible outcome what is the
difference between possibility and probability the possibility that we
could have a huge global pandemic and you know lots and lots of death and
problems there's a miniscule possibility what's the probability that it's gonna
get that far the probability from the data we have right now is very slim so
making sure that we really examine our beliefs look at the facts for and
against the factors all the factors that go into it not just a little sliver of
the factors you know consider your personal factors check whether you're
using extreme words whether you're making trying making a catastrophe out
of it and whether you're confusing a slim possibility with a probability that
something's going to happen already I hope
those tips were helpful and I will see you in the next set of videos