Recently I’ve been working with a client that is having to make a large number of positions redundant. One of the workshops I ran for them was about how to deal with the initial feelings (shock, worry etc) in that situation.
Instead of going through the usual curve I decided to look at the more recent research into what’s going on in your brain and what you can do about it. People seemed to find it very useful so I thought I’d share some of the key tips with you to keep to hand just in case.
Your Brain
When you get stressed your brain is flooded with cortisol. This makes you feel stressed and, long term, can be quite damaging to your hippocampus. This part of your brain moves short-term memories into long-term memories. That’s why your memory starts to go when you are stressed.
It’s also directly related to your self esteem, so when it’s damaged, your self esteem goes down, just when you need it most.
What to do
Aerobic exercise flushes this chemical out of your system – so get some exercise as soon as you can. Keep doing it on a regular basis. Aerobic exercise also helps you to grow new brain cells (neurons) by releasing neurotropic factors (brain fertiliser as John Ratey calls them).
Your Perception
Your interpretation of inputs can start to become very negative. You see new inputs as threats. This is perfectly sensible from an evolutionary point of view, but can be very unhelpful if you are possibly going to lose your job.
This is because it can mean you simply become unable to recognise opportunities when they are staring you in the face. It can also make you a complete pain to live with. The exercise will help with this too.
Energy
Your prefrontal cortex can help you in this situation, by reasoning with your negative thoughts, but only if you are not too tired. When you are tired you just don’t have enough energy in your prefrontal cortex to do this. This is why people are generally more grumpy when they are tired. So make sure you get enough sleep.
Plan
Another problem is that you can lose your ability to set goals and plan when you are stressed. From an evolutionary perspective, this response was evolved to deal with very immediate threats so there was no point in wasting energy on long term planning. (Your brain, whist it makes up 2% of your body weight, greedily uses 20% of the energy.)
Unfortunately these days, long term planning is very much what you need to do and keep focussed on. So go through what you really want to achieve in the next five, ten or twenty years. See how the current situation can help you to do that.
Your Thinking Skills May Be Impaired
This happens because simply using up space in your prefrontal cortex worrying about things doesn’t leave much space for anything else. It really is virtually that simple.
So follow the next procedure carefully.
Emotions
When you are presented with a shock or difficult situation to handle, talk about your emotions, or, at the very least, write them down. As usual, Shakespeare was ahead of us in this:
“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break.” (Macbeth)
It turns out that this is true. If you just describe your feelings they are reduced. If you don’t want to say them, write them down. This turns out to be jut as effective. Just keep a diary for a few weeks where you do this.
Friends
Have you ever noticed that, if you are ill and some friends come to see you, you don’t feel so bad while they’re there? This is because you suppress your groans and moans out of politeness (well, I’m assuming you do).
Your brain has just one part for doing lots of different kinds of suppression, including suppressing moaning and suppressing pain. The thing is, it’s an on/off switch. Once it’s on, it suppresses everything. So you really do feel better.
I hope you don’t have to use this information yourself, but please keep it to hand just in case it comes in useful one day. And feel free to share it with anyone who might benefit from it.
Please share your favourite coping strategies.
Tags: redundancy, shocks, Stress
We had a technical problem with the website yesterday which resulted in the comments being lost. Luckily Nancy had copies so I’m going to upload them again as they were particularly interesting.
We’d like to thank our contributors, and apologise for the inconvenience. Any other comments are of course also welcome.
Regards,
Caroline Hogarth (Vinehouse Web Diva)
Restored Comment From Deb
You never know what tomorrow may bring! That is the best piece of advise I was ever given in my 41 years – we all live in hope and for me this statement encapsulates that.
I like the idea of writing your feelings down (I have done this before when suffering from depression), and it really does help. Going back to read the notes/diary you made helps you plan how you will overcome any future instants where you may be feeling streesed or shocked in the future.
I must thank you on your timely communication of this. I’m going to share it with my team, family and friends. And on my desktop! Thanks Nancy.
Restored Comment From Lyn Cecil
When I discovered in January 2002 that my accountant of 6 and a half years had embezzled somewhere between half a million and a million pounds I tried all sorts of approaches to try and survive from day to day. Unfortunately I lay awake for hours in the middle of the night going over scenes in my mind and this lasted for a year. In desperation I tried sleeping pills which gave me 5 hours sleep but left me woolly headed the next day, not ideal when you are talking to lawyers, barristers , accountants etc or, eventually, interviewing liquidators. I talked to friends and family and received a humbling level of support, but still felt very alone and unable to cope. I put on 3 stone in weight in 6 months and went from working out twice a week at 6.30am with a personal trainer to just wanting to stay under the duvet. Never did. I learnt to live an hour at a time, a day at a time, just like a bereavement. I was badly let down by my auditiors, a top 25 firm that failed to notice glaring problems for 3 years, then when they did failed to tell me for 6 months.I won my complaint against them last September at the Institute of Chartered Accountants after over two years of delay on their part, and am just awaiting the outcome of their appeal.
I found smiling helped, silly as it may sound. If you smile you do feel better. We also laughed a lot, at the most absurd things, normally ourselves. I am still angry at my trusted auditors of 18 years for letting me down so badly, and calling my claims ’spurious’. Once the complaint is resolved I will be shredding the 30,000+ invoices/letters etc relating to that period and hope to move on. Despite our current success it is still very hard being so badly let down by people you trust. The money is an aside, it’s like being burgled, you have to write it off. I have learnt, the hard way, that relationships is the most important thing of all in life, nothing material really matters.
Restored Comment From Andrew
Just a note to say that I really see this work. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but advice is easy to ignore until you’ve experienced it or seen it make an impact!
I’ve been going through something similar at the moment. Exercise has helped. I think I over-did it, to be honest, and got myself exhausted! But if I stopped exercising, I got more tired and (crucially) more negative in my outlook.
With aerobic, regular, exercise (and plenty of energy), I saw the world in a much more positive light.
Talking through my worries and speculations with friends has also really helped. My friends can’t physically help, but the words do.
Also, my family are affected by it. Initially I tried to protect them from the impact (I felt guilty/it was my fault so I should deal with it myself); or tried to be all-positive (“don’t worry, it’ll be fine…”) rather than be open about my feelings. But that didn’t help me or them. Instead, asking them to tell me their fears and feelings helped us all massively, for the very reasons described by Nancy.
Suppression of the pain and bad feeling is good, but don’t do it too early! It’s like a grieving process, in my experience. Describe your feelings; talk about them first! Only then they can be boxed up so you’re ready to deal with the situation and plan rationally.
Restored Comment From Phil Commons
Just a point to clarify . Talking or writing down your emotions seems to be the opposite of supressing them as say with friends.
Which should you do when- do we bottle them and focus on other things or share them ?
Sorry for the delay in answering this.
From the research by Matt Leiberman and others just saying how you feel or writing it down reduces the strength of the emotions. It is quite the opposite of what most people would predict but it does work.