Reduce Social Worker Stress Blog

How to slow down and re-evaluate your stress at work

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that when a client tells me that they are “stressed out”, there are two things which are always present – a busy mind and a tense feeling inside the person.

What makes it worse is that these two things tend to feed on each other. The more tense they feel, the busier their minds tend to get as they try to figure out what’s wrong and what to do about it; the busier their mind gets, the more tense they tend to feel.

In order to help them to reconnect with their natural happiness and well-being, I will often point them towards what I believe to be the opposite of stress:
A quiet mind and a beautiful relaxed feeling

These two things feed each other in a wonderfully positive way. The quieter your mind, the more beautiful and relaxed a feeling you will tend to feel in your body; the more lovely the feeling, the quieter and calmer your mind will tend to become.

One of my favorite analogies for the workings of the mind I have come to share comes from working within recent training situations with ’stressed out’ senior/junior local government employees. Generally speaking, you can use the Wellbeing meter to let you know when your Wellbeing engine is functioning optimally and when it’s time to shift gears

But what if instead of measuring RPM, or “revolutions per minute”, our mental Wellbeing Meter measured GFPM – “Good feelings per minute”?

Let’s say that our brain’s “good feelings per minute” Wellbeing meter ran on a scale something like this:
0-50 GFPM: Optimal Functioning/Gorgeous, delicious, delectable feelings
50-60 GFPM: Healthy Functioning/Good Feelings
60-70 GFPM: Beginning to Overload/mild stress
70-90 GFPM: Spinning out of control/persistent stress
Over 100 GFPM: Mental Burnout/Extreme persistent Stress

When we find ourselves experiencing stress in our lives, we know that we can reduce and often eliminate that stress entirely by slowing down our thought-speed and increasing out good feelings per minute. And although there are thousands of books written about the power of meditation, prayer, chanting, and even questioning your thoughts to set yourself free, the simpler truth is this:
You don’t need to do anything to slow down your thoughts.

If you want to slow down your car engine, you do it by not pressing on the accelerator; if you want to slow down your thoughts, you do it by not speeding them up. You do it by going into a good memory and basking in it. It is that awareness that you can do that, without any one else having to be there, which creates more choice for you. Your relaxation is generated internally.

In other words, a quiet mind is actually your default setting – the place you will naturally return to when you’re not artificially revving up your thoughts in an attempt to control the future or figure out the past. And that quiet mind is so often accompanied by a beautiful feeling that continually trying to acquire better feelings through work, relationships, money or food begins to feel as silly as “practicing having a nose” – at best, it’s unnecessary, and at worst, it actually gets in the way.

Quick Tips for Social Care employees
1. Notice for yourself what happens to the feeling in your body when your thoughts slow down and speed up throughout the day.
2. Spend more and more time practising feeling good in yourself first. Imagine you have gone back to a wonderful memory. Keep practising that more and more however small every day. Notice how relaxed your body is after you do that.
3. Make a list of which activities you or your friends tend to do to relieve your stress. Create your own ‘stress free care plan’, by implementing them more and more, when you sense you are going into the upper levels of the Wellbeing Meter.

i.
Make a quick list of which activities (e-mail, websurfing, going for walks, eating, reading, etc.) tend to rev up your thoughts and which ones create the space for them to slow back down.
Notice which ones increase in your higher levels of your Wellbeing Meter

ii.
Spend as much time as you can today in a quiet mind and a beautiful feeling. If you notice yourself trying too hard to figure it all out, just let it go as best you can and come back to it when it feels easier.

By Deborah Rose

http://www.ReduceSocialWorkerStress.com