Stressing the right way

You may wonder that with individual differences in socioeconomic status, past, education, temperaments, character, personality, values, goals, aspirations, jobs, employment roles, knowledge domains and designations, we stress differently to the same stressors.

There is no denying the fact that emotional regulation underpins many of our character and personality traits. As significant it is to rein our emotions in, we need to understand that our emotional responses (though varied) need to be tempered with reason that not only reflects our individual character but also contribute to collective good. In other words, when stressed the right way, we can channel the response in a constructive manner.

There is an over-arching theme that puts spotlight on the emotions as we experience them in timeline as time is shifted.

Present:

If you are like most people, you'd question why start from this point in time? The reason for present being the starting point is, it's most accessible and it's where you can glean the most relevant information. So, attention skills come in handy here as we winnow through the content (possibly emotion laden) that's applicable and arrive at a series of decisions; whether, can we do something about the stressors? What resources would be employed? Are there any milestones?

You might be wondering that we humans, though impressively evolved, to day continue to be instinctive in face of stressors. Our brains interpret the everyday job stressors just like a saber tooth tiger even when we nowadays live in concrete jungles and skyscrapers not in the wild.

So, the first priority in case fight or flight or freeze response is cued, is to bring yourself to calm.

How?

Deep breaths

What does it do?

The parasympathetic (rest and digest) system goes in high gear. Our rational faculties are restored.

Past:

If you are like most people, you do retrospect and when it comes to making informed decisions, you base your response based on past experiences. That is only possible if we retrieve past events through a memory recall. Not to forget that this moment too will become past. If you are a skilled worker, you must maintain a system to log your learning.

The question is, after restoring calmness, how do we

1) Consolidate and refine our learning in a cold rational manner?

2) Predict and connect the dots.

How?

Cognitive reappraisals tend to facilitate and improve learning.

What does it do?

As we get more accurate, the quality of our decisions improve.

Future:

After the momentary overwhelm, and the past recall, we come to articulate our response.

How?

We'll guesstimate as if were our best selves, how we'd act? Is there a gap? How can we fulfill the gap?

What does it do?

We have accounted for the present.

We have accounted for the past.

We can't know the future. But we can predict it.