Dear MDECOE community,
In this Olympic decathlon of a pandemic, quick and effective stress-reducing strategies are as welcome as a cold drink at the end of the event. Jenny Taitz offers “Five minute coronavirus stress resets” in the New York Times Mind section. “So rather than dealing with anxiety and uncertainty by getting lost worrying…it’s helpful to experiment with quick strategies that will empower you. These strategies are not necessarily a cure, but can help lower the intensity of overwhelming emotions, allowing you to recalibrate to better deal with challenges you face.” Here is a brief summary of 5 strategies:
- Try music medicine-Research on inducing varying mood states concludes that we can improve our experience with a more uplifting soundtrack. “Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears — it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear,” as Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote in “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.”
- Cool off-Marsha Linehan, a professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Washington, popularized an exercise in dialectical behavior therapy to regulate intense emotions that involves immediately lowering your body temperature by creating a mini plunge pool for your face. Or you can just stick your face in front of your open freezer!
- Pace your breathing-In “The Healing Power of the Breath,” Drs. Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg offer a range of exercises to promote resilience. One is: Slow your breathing down to six breaths a minute by consciously inhaling and exhaling (to practice this timing, you can use a secondhand and inhale for five seconds, exhale for five seconds, and repeat four times, or try a guided recording). Paced breathing offers a host of nice remedy for anxiety , like reducing your blood pressure, which helps promote a sense of tranquility.
- Practice Anchoring-Mindfulness, or learning to see more clearly as opposed to jumping to conclusions, is a nice remedy for anxiety. One brief way to enter the moment is known as “anchoring,” a popular strategy. Start by physically centering yourself by digging your heels into the floor — this evokes a feeling of being grounded in reality. Then take a moment to observe: What am I thinking? Feeling in my body? Doing? Then ask yourself: Is my response: A) Helpful? B) Aligned with my values now? Or C) Related to future worries or a past problem? While we can get stuck in specific thoughts, stepping back to more generally decide if those thoughts are helpful can get us out of rumination mode.
- Hyperventilate-If you struggle with physical sensations of anxiety, like muscle tension and feeling like you can’t get enough air, a counterintuitive yet important way to manage is to practice bringing on those sensations in more quiet moments to improve how you tolerate stressful ones. Learning to repeatedly welcome physical symptoms allows you to stop seeing them as catastrophic.
To read more about these stress reduction strategies, see
For a list of many self-care options, please see our COE self-care website for resources for faculty, staff, students, and the community at:
https://www.csun.edu/eisner-education/self-care/articles-information-self-care
With so many stress reducing options, may you find a way that effectively reduces stress just for you!
Warmly,
Shari