Staying Healthy
Everyone is dealing with the issues today in their own way. Someone of us are terrified, some are angry, some are mistrusting, others are simply living life and having a rather good time.
Where are you today???
If you are dreading another day, more depressed or anxious than usual, you are not alone.
Stress is the biggest culprit of being unhealthy. Even before we recognize that we are sick, stressors take over our body and we become sick.
FEAR will do this too. And between the media, masks and social isolation, many people are falling ill even without a virus. It is called overload.
Coping is defined as “a process of constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands or conflicts appraised as taxing or exceeding one’s resources” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 141). Coping is a dynamic process involving cognitive and behavioral modifications to manage stress.
“There are two major categories in coping: problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. In problemfocused coping the individual puts forth effort to manage or alter the stressor or the situation (e.g., positive-self talk, goal setting, and time management). Emotion-focused coping, on the other hand, revolves around regulating the emotional responses due to the problem (e.g., meditation and relaxation), but there are detrimental emotion-focused strategies, including self-blame, wishful thinking, and behavioral withdrawal.” (WEBSITE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY)
We develop fight or flight strategies where we see things as catastrophic because we can’t control the fear believing we cannot control the outcomes. Consequently, we often begin to perseverate, and our minds can’t stop thinking about the person or situation that made us feel so helpless.
We often go back to ways in which to gain the control back.
Once we are stuck in fear, our sympathetic nervous system begins to shut down and our adrenal and digestive system slow down causing our Thyroid to slow down as well. We feel tired, confused and sometimes depressed. We gain with are dx with thyroid condition, get put on meditation and we are off and running in the medical model.