Managing stress
Stress is a process that begins when a person judges a situation as threatening to them, and starts a cognitive evaluation of how to handle it. The situation can be perceived as a threat, damage/loss or challenge.
The primary evaluation is followed by a secondary one in which the individual takes into account their own resources and the repercussions of facing the situation. If the person perceives that the actual demands exceed their resources, a complex physiological mechanism is activated that prepares the individual to fight, flight or endure. This model is based on the particular relationship that is established between a person and a specific situation.
General strategies
Correctly interpret your body’s signals such as palpitations, muscle tension, sweating is essential to manage your stress. Remember that activation of your sympathetic nervous system allows you to adapt better to situations that require a quick response. Feel how your body takes over through the emotions that you are feeling to prepare you to confront a task or professional situation. Use this activation to face your challenges!
Organise your work well, establish realistic goals, prioritise the important things, delegate what you can…
Have hobbies in your routines, moments when you focus on carrying out those activities that are pleasant in your life.
Your social network
We have seen that cortisol is one of the hormones involved in the stress response and its presence can be, in the long run, dangerous. Cortisol has an antidote: oxytocin, a pituitary hormone that is generated in pleasurable situations and which causes more confidence, improves relationships and decreases stress. Oxytocin is the hormone of social instincts: it prefers us to look for relationships and makes us feel good when we have them. It uses social support as a form of managing stress. Asking for and giving help in stressful situations increases the generation of oxytocin and it helps us to prevent and improve our stress.
Specific strategies
In the management of stress within the working world we can use activation control techniques that allow us to adjust our level of attention to the characteristics of work demands, as well as recover our well-being after a prolonged and intense effort.
We have already seen that momentary increases in our body’s levels of activation, both physiologically and cognitively, have an adaptive function. In the working world, this allows us to meet the demands of the environment, tasks. However, if, as we have shown, these increases are produced in a massive, intense, long-lasting and/or repetitive way, then it can produce effects damaging to both physical and psychological health.
Regular and systematic training that provides us with skills and abilities to manage our levels of activation can be beneficial, as much in the personal sphere as in the working one, and it encourages a rise in quality of life and a better working atmosphere as well as prevention of behavioural disorders, for example: professional strain syndrome, burnout syndrome or “burnt worker syndrome”, occupational stress syndrome (OSS), etc.
Currently virtual reality is a means of highly effective technology that can make this goal easier and allow access to learning and practice of these techniques such as breathing control, different types of relaxation and training to focus attention through simple and effective Mindfulness exercises that allow us to identify, strengthen and maintain a state of well-being with the resulting benefits for the user who is involved in sustained practice.
Two relaxation techniques exist that we will use and coordinate fundamentally in this virtual training protocol:
● Training in diaphragmatic breathing
● Jacobson progressive muscle relaxation
This learning is internalised through practice and is generalised to personal and working environments, providing the user with abilities that prepare them for greater satisfaction and work performance.
Through the virtual application, Amelia virtual Care, this learning can take place in an independent and personal way as well as receiving psychological and interactive assistance for any query, doubt or question.