In the courtyard of March, in the body of vitamin deficiency, in the world there is an epidemic of CoV19, and here also deadlines. The Deadlines were not informed about our difficult life circumstances. It's time to think about health. Including mental. In the end, what you work breaks down, but we work with our heads.In October last year, I flew to Siberia on TEDx Novosibirsk and suddenly I was on a plane next to another speaker, Pavel Bukov. He is a psychotherapist and was going to make a report about professional burnout: how to burn out less and not completely. Naturally, I remembered how I burned out a year ago myself. At the same time, I remembered how many people are jamming into the gym when a speaker talks about burnout at a technology conference. In general, while we were flying to Siberia, I recorded with Pavel an episode of a podcast about stress and burnout and decided to collect an article from it.
This is one of my podcast episodes. An article based on an episode about modern biotechnology can be found here .Briefly about Paul . On the one hand, he is a psychotherapist, on the other hand, a specialist in team building. He was always interested in the human personality and its attitude. How does a person live in a modern society? How does our personality function when some disorder happens to it? The main text below is a transcript of Paul’s story, which I made a little shorter and added a couple of clarifying comments.How stress works
If a person is in a “tuned state”, then both hemispheres work together, the autonomic system works stably, and everything in life is more or less good. However, modern information flows often lead to the fact that a person is “upset”. Not literally when he is in a bad mood. And in the sense that certain systems start to work in his wrong way .For example, someone believes that nature, someone believes that the Lord, created the knee joints of man. They were made to bend, and a person could carry something, but they are not very suitable for downhill skiing. Therefore, when a person is well over 40, and he descends as a young man, such a load is placed on his knees that traumatologists are very happy and are advised not to go skiing anymore. There are loads to which our body, in principle, is not adapted. With age, it only becomes more noticeable.From this association, one can go to the mind and brain.How did primitive man live?
We know that a person has a parasympathetic and sympathetic system .The first, parasympathetic, works when the heart beats smoothly, a person’s breathing is calm, when there is the ability to reproduce and digest. In fact, when we with our beloved person lie in bed, have a snack, watch something, enjoy food and each other, we are in the grip of the parasympathetic system. Around the same time, a primitive man felt himself in a cave: he felt good and calm there. Then he thinks: “Okay, time to go to work.” He takes his spear, pushes the stone away and goes to work. There he fights with someone, runs away from someone, competes for food or resources. For all this, he needs a sympathetic system. Then he drags the mammoth leg into the cave, as cartoon directors especially like to imagine, and again cuts off his tension, turning into a relaxation mode,turning off the sympathetic system again and passing into the power of the parasympathetic.The second system, sympathetic, is responsible for increasing pressure, increases the level of glucose release into the body, and cuts down the digestive system. For example, if you see gopniks on the street, you don’t really want to eat, and you don’t really think about love.Image source Thework of the sympathetic system, which is responsible for stress, for pain, for activity, alternates with the work of the parasympathetic system. This is the pendulum of a normal person moving from one state to another. But it was in primitive times when there were no loans. Especially the mortgage! Because a mortgage, and even a couple of others, have such an effect on a person’s sympathetic system that it becomes uncomfortable for him to fully rest. “Thoughts” are overwhelmed in his head.How did people live in the 70s?
Locksmith Petrovich turned off the machine and his working day was over. He's relaxing.How do we live now?
Now people take all the work with them. From this, the sympathetic and parasympathetic pendulums stray. This is especially evident in those who have a predisposition to increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. With its overabundance, people are overexcited and become subject to panic attacks. It is in order to swallow the necessary peace that people engage in some kind of spiritual or physical practice. They pray, they meditate, go camping, have pets, do fitness. Muscular activity helps to process excess cortisol.If you don’t know the difference between cortisol and adrenaline, you can give a simple example. Roughly speaking, when your boss calls you, and you understand that you have already missed 10 calls, and this is something VERY urgent, it's about adrenaline. When a couple of hundred people call you every day, each of which needs something from you, even if it’s a trifle, it’s about cortisol.
We will not delve into biochemistry, we just need to understand what is, say, oxytocin - this is a nice hormone, good. And the hormones of the cortisol series dry out the mucous membranes, strengthen the heartbeat, increase breathing. These are battle hormones.How to understand your stress level
Now everything around us tells us: “Tighten yourself! Run to success! ” Only the measure of success is different for everyone. We are told: “Look on instagram! Look what kind of car he has, look what kind of woman he tuned. Come on, all this is needed faster! ”Paul even has a poem for this occasion.
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A person, not having a clear understanding of the boundaries of his stress, goes into the range of destruction. This happens very often when people exceed their norm. Hence, panic attacks, a lot of bad habits. For example, the Chinese from the sewers extract the fat on which they fry. Special people collect it, sell it, and fry it again on this fat, because it does not combine with water. You can also collect antidepressants in large cities from sewers. So much comes out of their urine that they almost crystallize there.Understanding your stress level is very difficult, especially when you are already under stress . The difficult life situation from the inside seems completely normal, because “they still live like that,” but then retrospectively, looking back, you say: “Lord, why did I do all this, what was that ?!”There is a wonderful metaphor that if a frog is thrown into hot water, it will bustle and jump out of there. And if you put it in cold water and gradually heat it, then the frog will calmly boil and will not try to jump out.Signs of stress
Bad dream . A person wakes up, does not immediately fall asleep, wakes up at night and begins to think about work. It is difficult for him to fall asleep and difficult to wake up. At least 7 hours of sleep is needed by everyone except Aristotle and Dali.: , , , , . , , . , . . , «, , ».
I think that we need to clearly say that modern neuroscientists believe that there are no Aristotles among us, and those who are Aristotles, check yourself a couple more times, please.Anorexia or lack of desire to have sex . Natural biological drives are appetite and libido. There are two extremes: this simply does not exist, you do not want anything, you need to force yourself, or an agitated desire — overeating on nervous grounds, sex, as for the last time. Remember the famous movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. There, the master trader tells the novice exchange clerk: "You need to masturbate several times a day." For what? Stress is very strong, and this is an easy way to reduce it.Stress test
There is a great test you can do right now. Turn on the stopwatch for one minute, turn the phone over and try to decide for yourself when your minute will end. So, imagine, just don’t count, such a subjective moment. Turn the phone over.It turned out that there are 58 seconds, 62. You can be congratulated, you adequately perceive time. If you drive too much, there will be 40 seconds, that is, your inner rhythm is very fast. It comes out of your subjective time. If you have 1.5 minutes there, or even two, then either you are in nirvana at all, or you have already broken all defense mechanisms, the pendulums of relaxation and tension are knocked down.What to do? Simple Tips for an Emerging Stress Fighter
Suppose you have problems with one or more of the items in the list above. You understand that you are beyond acceptable stress levels. How to start going out? Again, the loan will remain a loan, work, most likely, will also remain work, because not everyone can afford to quit. You can probably change the phone to a dialer or leave it at work, but this is also some step. What are some simple ideas for the first steps that could help you?Add Oxytocin to Your Life
For a beginner self-harmonizer, it is very important to let into your life something that gives peace of mind, oxytocin. You need to build your life in such a way that there is enough time for a hobby, to communicate with loved ones, to rest from work. When work eats up all life, and there is no distinction between work and rest, for some time, maybe 10 years, maybe even 20 years, a person withstands it, and then work, like gas, occupies the entire volume that is available to it.Do not forget that for someone a change of occupation can bring pleasure and relaxation. The brilliant academician Pavlov was the winner of skiing in St. Petersburg. Mendeleev made filigree suitcases. Dancing is very helpful. In general, you need to do fitness, not only because it is useful and fashionable, but in order to get joy, excitement from it.Control the flow of information and communication with toxic people
Among your environment there are unfamiliar people who, nevertheless, constantly complain about something to you. You are naturally tired of this. They just create some kind of negative background. For example, one client says: “I recently realized that we were going to dinner with my colleagues and were starting to laugh at someone from our office. And after some time I realized that I probably should not do this. Firstly, because they will also laugh at me when I am not at dinner. And secondly, probably this is not the community and the communication that I need. ”On the other hand, there are people with whom you have something in common, something emotionally interesting. There are friends who have complained to you, and whom you have complained. There is some kind of deep exchange of souls, a touch. This is a fundamentally different quality of communication. Here you can just cry, complain, share something and listen in return. Find places and companies where there is positive, where you are charged, where you have emotional and intellectual content.Talk with a therapist
Do I need to be ashamed of going to a therapist? Of course not. You need to go to a psychotherapist and a psychologist, because the very pace of life now, like downhill skiing and knees, leads to the fact that the psyche of people is subjected to very large stresses. Recipes on how to save it without loads, how to properly operate it, are few. And the few people who follow them.Another digression about why a psychotherapist or psychologist is really needed. A person very often has a difficult childhood. We in Russia always love to scold, they can force, but almost no one can praise and support. If in childhood there was a lot of toxic, then psychologists are needed in order to pull out the energy associated in childhood.In Soviet times, there was such a terrible person called a "psychiatrist." If a person got to a psychiatrist, then he was limited in his rights, he could not drive a car, he was not sold firearms. Therefore, people, from old memory, are afraid of the prefix "psycho." On the other hand, there are personnel specialists involved in personnel assessment. This is the same psychology, only without a white coat. Any psychotherapist with such experience will tell you that among his clients there are many top managers - people who have difficulties with workloads, whose tasks have turned from expert ones into tasks of mentoring. That is, their functionality has changed, and they do not always understand how to fully cope with these tasks. So if you are not afraid to communicate with people from the human resources department, then talk to a psychologist normally.It is important to add that there are people with mental disorders who need help in order to remain a full member of society. If this is not the case when a person needs to be isolated, but he needs to give him the right “crutch”. A person will then bring a lot of benefits and live a full life, but without a “crutch” he certainly won’t survive.Stress can be helpful.
There is a standard thesis about leaving the comfort zone: there is a necessary level of stress so that we continue to grow and develop. In fact, psychological stress is no different from physical stress. For example, you went out in the winter to temper and stood bare feet in the snow. On the one hand, you are cold, you are experiencing a temperature shock, but you feel cheerful. You stood for about fifteen seconds and cheered up. You are fine. This worked out the sympathetic system, threw out all the necessary hormones. You became more cheerful, and that same hardening occurred.Then you think: "Let me rest a bit and stand still for 5-7 seconds." Here you already swing your cold resistance. You will feel cold, but do not catch a cold if your immunity and your nervous system are ready for this. You are already looking into tomorrow. But if you just stand for five minutes, then frostbite your legs. The story with stress is very similar: its level should be controlled.Instead of conclusions
I will try to summarize a short list of what needs to be done to deal with stress and burnout:- Understand what level of stress is comfortable.
- Understand that if the level of stress is not comfortable, then how much discomfort it causes. To do this, you need to check that with sleep, that with appetite, that with sexual drives. If something is wrong, then the level of stress is already far beyond the permissible.
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