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Crisis Intervention
Week Two
Stress Management
Quote from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
"Healers must understand that love does not only mean love for others; it also means love for oneself. We must be aware of our limits and know when it is necessary to nurture ourselves. We must strike a balance between what we do for ourselves and what we do for others, learning to receive as well as to give."
This week is the topic of Stress Management. The activities are designed to help you begin a process of self reflection of your current stressors and coping mechanisms. Another activity will look at how these stressors affect you: physically, behaviorally, emotionally and spiritually. It is so important for each of us to be able to look honestly at ourselves so we have a basis for the management part.
Your text discusses recognition of stress and management in Chapters 16 & 17. Let me pull some quotes from there to help frame this week's topic. For all persons entering a Health Care Profession there can be a great deal of satisfaction, "knowing how to save lives, reduce pain, and having the opportunity to truly make a difference." However, if not thought through beforehand and worked carefully, " work stresses can carry over into home life, poisoning family relationships." It is awful to think that a job that can be so satisfying can destroy the rest of your life! These chapters also highlight some ways to help prevent this type of thing from happening. How do you develop resiliency? What can you learn from reading or talking with others about developing resiliency so that this can truly be a life long profession for you.
Job stress can be a killer or at least make people really uncomfortable. Here are some suggestions by one author to people who are dealing with a great deal of stress currently or who are developing their support system for when it's needed right away.
Find an active listener. This should be a person who understands confidentiality, knows how to listen actively and offer good feedback.
Avoid extreme thinking. For example, you've been on a child abuse case and your thinking start down a trail of, "The world is a mess. People are all crazy." Try to get off that track and turn away from that bombardment of negative thinking.
Stop rehearsing negative thoughts. Picture a negative thought as a shovel you're using to dig yourself in deeper. Try to talk to yourself in slightly more positive ways.
Consider the power of "thought stoppage." One example of this is a technique that involves wearing a rubber band around your wrist. When a bad thought or bad scene enters your mind, you flick the rubber band hard and say, "No!" Try only for two to three days to get good results.
Locate the name of at least two excellent counselors now. When you under a severe stress your thinking and reasoning abilities aren't functioning as well. Do the footwork before you need the service to find someone that you can trust, that is known to do positive work and that your insurance or source of payment can cover. (Burnout to Balance by Hopson, Hopson and Dyar)
For purposes of this class and our discussions, I have included a vocabulary list below this week. Definitions may vary in other settings, but these will be utilized during this class.
Quote - Unknown
"Don't make someone else's problem your crisis. It takes away from their strength when you solve the problem for them."
Balance of Healthy Self-Care
Activities for Week Two:
- Reading:
- Participation Points:
- Discussion Group: Initiate at least one original response to the question posted by the instructor on the Web Board and respond to at least two other ideas from
your group. This is the discussion about job stressoers. (The Instructor has assigned you to a group for discussion at the beginning of Week Two) Your instructor will observe these discussions. These responses should reflect the information gained from your own research and reading.
- Discussion Group: on Wednesday a scenario with questions will be put in each of the Discussion Groups for each of you to respond to and converse with each other about intervention.
- Personal Inventory (also part of Project One)
Collect data from an outside sources about your stress level by taking the Stress Assess quiz, self reflection and feedback from others. Start gathering data about how you are affected by stress: physically, behaviorally, emotionally and spiritually. This personal inventory of how stress affects you and your response to it will be part of Project One.
Quote - Unknown
"Respond to people, don't react to them or the situation."
Vocabulary
- Anxiety: an emotional state caused by stress. It is characterized by increase in sympathetic nervous system response.
- Burn-out: occurs when coping mechanisms no longer buffer the job stressors. It can compromise personal health and well-being.
- Critical incident: or Acute Stress Reaction - a reaction that occurs at the scene or shortly after the event.
- Cumulative stress reaction: stress reaction that results from continuous exposure to work and non-work stressors. This reaction may also be called "burn-out." Usually it is not associated with a single critical incident.
- Defense mechanisms: adaptive functions of the personality that usually help an individual adjust to stressful situations. Defense mechanisms can be helpful or harmful to the long term health of the person.
- Delayed stress reaction: a stress reaction that occurs days, weeks, or months after a critical incident, also may be called post-traumatic disorder stress.
- Stress: a state of physical or psychological arousal
- Stressor: any agent or situation that causes stress
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