Tag: Resilience

How to boil a frog….

How to boil a frog….

This blog from our HWBI Ninja, Rob Sanderson considers what we can do to spot stress and practical things we can do to acknowledge it and minimise the negative impact on our health and wellbeing.

What?!! I hear you ask, why would anyone want to do that? Firstly, I don’t condone boiling frogs, please don’t try this! I love frogs and even built a pond for them at the bottom of the garden, so, to be clear, it’s not something I have tried or intend to.

So how do you boil a frog?

It shouldn’t be at all possible. Frogs are sensitive to temperature. Regardless of this, in 1872, scientist, Heinzmann experimented and concluded if you increase the heat of the water very gradually, the poor frog doesn’t notice until it’s too late.

What has this got to do with health and well-being?

Firstly, I wanted to be sure I had your attention (you are still reading, right?) and secondly because it’s an excellent metaphor for the point of this post:

Just like our ill-fated frog, millions of people are [metaphorically] boiling themselves alive with stress and anxiety. The rise in this pressure is so gradual they don’t realise until it suddenly gets too much.

As a psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist, the most common conditions I help people with, are stress and anxiety, related. While many people recognise stress or anxiety, a surprising amount do not. Symptomatically, it’s evident when people are experiencing stress and anxiety, yet they don’t realise it. People explain, “I don’t suffer from stress, I just want to stop biting my nails,” or “I don’t have stress, I drink too much,” “eat too much,” “can’t sleep,” “have headaches,” “anger issues,” etc. sure signs of stress. Surprisingly, some clients have been so unaware of their extreme stress levels until it manifested itself physically when they were rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. I call this stealth anxiety.

How can I spot the warning signs?

Some of the physical signs of stress and anxiety include poor sleep, frequent need to use the loo, stomachache, sudden weight gain or loss, breathlessness, headaches, palpitations, sweats, tiredness and fatigue. The effects on mental health can include, panic attacks, lack of concentration, anger, feeling uneasy, depression and low mood.

It’s not too late, act now to turn the heat down or jump out!

Being positive is a natural defence against stress, anxiety and depression. As a Solution-Focused therapist, people are encouraged to look for the solution rather than focusing on the problem. Being solution-focused is powerful against stress and anxiety because finding solutions reduce stress. One way of doing this is by practising what we call the 3 p’s, which are to think positively, be active in a positive way, and to interact positively. When we do this, we create patterns in the brain that are proven to help fight stress, anxiety and depression.

On a positive note, here’s a happy ending!

In 2002, Victor H. Hutchison, a zoologist reveals, that more recent experiments show as the water is heated, the frog tries to escape, and eventually jumps out.

If you are worried about stress, anxiety or depression, you can talk to your GP or arrange an appointment with a talking therapist. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me using the link below.

Rob Sanderson

Clinical Hypnotherapist and Psychotherapy

Help Hypnotherapy | Liverpool & Merseyside

https://www.helphypnotherapy.co.uk/

Photo by Darko Pribeg on Unsplash

Writing to boost health and wellbeing – Try reaching for the pen rather than your digital device.

Writing to boost health and wellbeing – Try reaching for the pen rather than your digital device.

This blog from out HWBI Ninja, Rob Young and co-founder Su, considers how writing can boost your health and wellbeing.

Two perspectives – writing to improve health and wellbeing and writing to give voice and connect.

Next time that you feel under pressure or stressed it might be better to reach for the pen than reaching for the digital device.  The digital device may be a great displacement activity but may not be as good for your health and wellbeing.  There is a growing body of evidence that shows that writing can:

  • Encourage mindfulness
  • Help you to find perspective on difficult issues
  • Provide an opportunity for storytelling for self-exploration
  • Foster clarity and insight
  • Releases creative potential
  • Release anxiety or stress
  • Expand your creative abilities and work through blocks

A study by Robinson (2000) explores the connections between writing and wellbeing.  He discovered a number of studies that demonstrated how writing can have positive psychological and clinical benefits.  One study Robinson referenced, (Smyth, Stone et al 1999) found that participants who were asked to write about stressful life experiences for 3 consecutive days for a week reported 47% improvement in their clinical symptoms verses a control group who were asked to write about their general plans for the day, this group reported a 24% improvement.  Robinson goes on to explore if the quality of writing is also important….. perhaps for another blog in the future. 

Our Super HWBInspiration Ninja, Rob Young has brought his thoughts and experience of writing, not just for health and wellbeing, but also to give voice and communicate complex and often difficult subject matter.  He helps service users, clinicians and leaders find ways to communicated to engage, connect and no doubt to heal.  What follows is Rob’s account and hope you enjoy and take inspiration.

What good is a writer? By Rob Young

To answer that question, we must first ask ourselves, what writing is and more importantly, what it isn’t.

The ability to write is not a gift from on-high, it can be learned.  I have taught the craft of writing to a truly diverse range of participants from heart surgeons to ‘tower block kids’ some of whom were illiterate (the kids, that is!) yet their stories were sublime.

Writing is not something you take up when you retire. We do it every day, in texts, emails, notes, reports and so on.  Every time we speak, we are telling someone a story, yet we never learn the craft.

Writing is not just a hobby, a frivolous add-on once the ‘real work’ is done. It is our most efficient way of communicating what it is to be human. We can never truly relate to another person’s experience because even if we both stare at the same view; what we see is unique. The best that we can do is relate with the generic human condition and that is… a struggle.

We like to watch people struggle; it is how we learn to survive. From folk tales to Hollywood, lectures to books, the same format applies: the protagonist is dealt a problem, they investigate it, then find a solution. The old joke being, that in healthcare research, you don’t find an answer, you find ten more questions, but the basic format remains: we fail, we learn, we “grow some resilience”.

We watch our heroes fail and flounder, as they search for innovative ways to battle their demons. If their enemy is huge, they use speed. If their enemy is fast, they use stealth. And so on. They try, fail then try something else until they succeed. Time and time again its leftfield-thinking that saves the day. This valuable lesson is burned upon our retina as we all spend approximately 2 years of our lives watching movies, so the concept of innovation is embedded deep within our psyche. It is there for a reason, to help us survive.

As a writer, my ‘day job’ is helping people to communicate. The vast majority of my clients are intelligent, articulate professionals who are fluent in their craft. So why do they need me?

The questions they ask are often simple:

“Why don’t people come to my meetings?”

“Why is my PowerPoint so dull?”

“My specialist subject makes people wince but seriously, what can I do?”

Invariably, the answer lies with a fresh point of view.

Let’s take a look at the challenge. How is your meeting advertised? On what format? What is the hook? What will I gain from attending? These are all reasonable questions that require a perky response. If one way doesn’t work, then let’s try another. That’s all there is to it. We try, we fail, we try something else.

We have all sat through “Death by PowerPoint”, that sleep-inducing slideshow full of tiny text, meaningless pie-charts and 1980’s Clip Art, so please, let’s not do that. Let’s do something better.

What I find particularly interesting is the third question, because it is important. There are some issues in healthcare that are so dark, our natural response is to flinch, withdraw and ‘change channels’. It is understandable but it also a dangerous one because before we can even begin to solve the issue, we must open up a conversation. The challenge here is how to welcome people into a world that they find abhorrent.

Here are two examples of ways I’ve been able to help:

Giving voice

I met a clinician who did wonderful work helping victims of Female Genital Mutilation. Whenever she presented at conference, the audience were reticent, bracing themselves for an hour of upset and gore, while some did not attend at all.

The traditional way to approach this subject is to focus on the condition.  We decided to change that view. Working with the clinician, we refocussed her presentation to pay tribute to the shy, fragile women who she treats every day.  We told the story in their voices, not ours.  Excerpts of verbatim text were read from behind a hospital screen.  The images we revealed were of crisp white cotton sheets that spoke of innocence and dignity.  In everything we did, we did not once mention anything dark until humanity had been given the priority it deserved.

The subsequent performance reduced many veteran clinicians to tears and post-talk, the doctor was surrounded by many admirers praising her work.  Though my part was minimal, I felt an immense sense of pride that we had shown respect for the patients, the work and the audience in a new and innovative way.

Helping people to connect

Perhaps the greatest challenge I have faced as a writer was to communicate the concept of pain. It is something that you cannot see, hear, examine or compare as every pain is unique.

Professor Bernie Carter is a former Great Ormond Street nurse who has devoted her life to helping children with chronic complex pain issues. It is a subject so dark that it makes you wince just to think of it, so to open up a conversation is a challenge in itself.

As the concept of pain is so universal, we decided to concentrate on one particular moment in time – when a child with chronic complex pain is brought into A&E. In this moment, three separate languages come into play: the informed language of the clinician, the silence or scream of the child and her mother who speaks in metaphor, “She’s like a rabbit in the headlights / I can see the pain in her eyes”. The fact that these three language styles almost, but don’t quite connect is as much of an issue about communication as it is about healthcare.

Together, we looked at this moment in time from a plethora of viewpoints, from families to clinicians, charity workers to theologians, we even worked with a contortionist. We recorded their voices and played them via rotating mobiles in a huge, dark room, so the voices swirled above your head, almost but never quite connecting. We premiered our work in a theatre, not a conference, where again, many people were reduced to tears, not because we were gunning for sympathy but the fact that they had ‘got it’. They understood the challenge and agreed, wholeheartedly, that something must be done.  

It is a personal bugbear of mine that many people raise awareness without acting upon it.  I was determined that would not be the case with our pain project. Based upon the success of our presentation, we were able to acquire Arts Council funding to tour pain conferences as far afield as South Africa. We created downloadable brochures and the animation below:

What strikes me about the project, looking back upon it now, is another axis point, another moment in time – the one where art meets science, when the heart of the clinician meets the brain of the artist to clash, flirt and tango. It is a thrilling moment in time when magical things can happen.

I have worked with Su and Claire (my HWBInspiration Ninja colleagues) for many years now and have always been impressed by the fact that they see the arts as a liberating force, in healthcare and beyond.  They value the role that the arts can play in communicating issues from management to research, leadership to personal empowerment.  The stories they tell are told in a voice that is warm, welcoming and accessible to all and in today’s noisy world, but their voice rings true as clear and authentic.  If you have a challenge, they can help.

Thank you for reading and good luck in telling your story.

To contact or follow Rob

Twitter:   @R0BY0UNG       

Website:   http://robyoung.info

Email:   rob@robyoung.info

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/rob.young.587

Instagram: rob.the.writer

References

Robinson, M. Writing well: health and the power to make images.  Journal of Medical Ethics: Medical Humanities.  2000: Vol 26. p79-84.

Smyth JM, Stone AA, Hurewitz A, Kael A. Effects of writing about stressful experiences on symptom reduction in patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis. Journal of the American Medical Association 1999;281:1304-9.

HWBInspiration co-founders, Su & Claire, are grateful to our Associate HWBI Ninjas for sharing their knowledge, skill and insights.

R = Resilience – 10 Keys to Happier Living

R = Resilience – 10 Keys to Happier Living

This blog, written by our HWBI Ninja Lou, focuses on how we can boost our resilience and attend to our health and wellbeing. She also draws attention to team resilience ….. we are more likely to be resilient together after all.

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress. As much as it involves “bouncing back” from difficult experiences it can also involve personal growth. “Becoming more resilient not only helps us to get through difficult circumstances it also empowers you to grow and even improve your life along the way” (American Psychological Association).

There are many definitions of Resilience. I recently watched a webinar by the Association of Executive Coaching in partnership with Resilience Engine. They talked about resilience as our adaptability and a measure of resilience as our capacity for change. Robertson and Cooper describe resilience as a combination of personal characteristics and skills “The characteristics which are associated with higher levels of resilience are inherent in our personalities, however, resilience skills can be used to help us adapt our natural style and tendencies”. So, resilience skills can be learned and developed.  

So how can we measure our resilience? 

There are some really useful tools freely available to help you to measure and understand your resilience. They  typically explore 5 common themes including:

  • Self-control
  • Adaptability
  • Optimism
  • Self-sufficiency
  • Persistence

The Resilience Engine offers their Resilience Check – In tool which provides you with your resilience level in relation to their Resilience Dynamic and some top resilience enablers. The Resilience Dynamic details 3 levels of Resilience: Breakdown, Break-Even and Breakthrough.  

Robertsoncooper offers their i-resilience tool which provides you with a detailed report which covers their 4 key components of resilience which are: Confidence, Purposefulness, Adaptability and Social Support. Tools and resources focussed on these four areas for building resilience are available on the i-resilience portal.

So how can we build our resilience?

The College of Wellbeing offers great tools and tips:

The boat and water mapping tool is a simple and effective tool for mapping factors that influence our resilience. By identifying the negative and positive influences on our resilience we can develop ways to reduce the negative and strengthen the positive.  

The SSRI toolkit offers a framework for identifying the tools that we already have available to build our resilience. It is based on the concept that the choices we make and actions we take can have a natural anti-depressant effect. SSRI in this model stands for :

  • Strategies i.e. practical things we can do i.e. meditation or attention to diet and exercise
  • Strengths i.e. what you can draw upon internally in yourself i.e. courage and determination
  • Resources i.e. where can you seek external support i.e. friends and support groups
  • Insights i.e. can you look at things differently to help you move forward? i

Everyday Health offers an Everyday Health Assessment which provides you with a resilience score and 9 attributes that can help you develop to become your most resilient self which has been adapted from Dr Sood’s model of resilience. The attributes include internal factors i.e. skills we have or have learned and can better develop such as self-control and self-confidence and external factors such as personal relationship, purpose and meaning and communities and social support.

There are also some really useful guides for building resilience in the era of COVID 19.

An article in Psychology today suggests that acceptance (Hayes et al 2011), self-compassion (Neff 2015) and gratitude (Wood et al 2010) are approaches that can help face challenging times.  The author suggests:

  • Be open – accept thoughts and feelings instead or of trying to suppress or change them “this doesn’t mean resignation to these thoughts and feelings but recognising that we have those experiences and seeing them for what they are (a thought is just that while a feeling is just that)”
  • Be aware – being fully present in the moment instead of being caught up in our thoughts and feelings. One way to help with this is to take time and focus on breathing while noticing one thing with each sense
  • Be engaged and active – take time to consider what’s important and take action to bring what’s important closer to you
  • Be self-compassionate – be kind to yourself as opposed to judging ourselves “ask yourself what a caring friend or family member might say” next time you find yourself saying critical things to yourself
  • Practice gratitude – trying out approaches to gratitude such as journaling about things that you are grateful for can serve as a beacon of hope.  

A more recent article from June in  Science Direct  discusses the urgent need for a focus on resilience during the coronavirus pandemic as “resilience is pivotal to cope with stress and vital to stay in balance”. The authors emphasise that stress and anxiety are normal reactions to the pandemic and stress reactions may include changes in concentration, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, reduced productivity and interpersonal conflict. In addition to the threat of the virus, the quarantine measures increase the stress-related symptoms. To help adapt to the mental health effects they refer to several useful pieces of advice from the resilience literature including:

  • Promoting social connectedness as loneliness and social isolation is what makes the crisis different compared to many others
  • Planning routine day to day activities and promoting self-care
  • Increased attention to exercise and nutrition
  • Regular media breaks
  • Help people feel in control (one of the findings in stress and resilience research is that the higher the controllability of a stress situation is, the better individuals cope with the situation) for example measures people can take to reduce risk of infection and minimise the spread of disease.

Finally AOD who are experts in team based working have collated  some really great resources around team working and resilience. 

Over the past 12 weeks, I have found myself consciously and unconsciously adopting some of these practices, however reading about them to write this blog has been a useful reminder of how I can take back some control over my reaction to the multitude of emotions I have experienced and continue to feel during the pandemic. I hope that you find some of this useful too.  

Note the photo I have used for this blog is a photo I took early January of a Hellebore in my garden.  It  summed up to me how resilient they must be to be able to produce these gorgeous flowers through winter!

HWBInspiration co-founders, Su & Claire, are grateful to our Associate HWBI Ninjas for sharing their knowledge, skill and insights.