STRESS READINESS RESPONSIVENESS & RESILIENCY
AWARENESS + ACTIONS
Resource Toolkit & Professional Services for
Cultivating Ethical, Humane & Harmonious Workplaces
Self-Created Mind/Body Stress
Taking Responsibility for the Impact Our Stressful Choices and Behaviors Have Upon Us
Mental and Emotional Self-Created Stress
Stressful Mental and Emotional Projections are an extension of Albrecht's "Anticipatory" Stress. Commonly referred to as "Mind Traps" these cognitive distortions can derail our normally healthy thinking processes toward unhealthy, unproductive and unfactual places. Left unchecked they can lead to mentally beating ourselves up and engaging in negative, self-sabotaging choices and behaviors that can even be considered an act of self-violence. Unethical decision-making often goes hand-in-hand with some of these cognitive distortions as the person experiencing them is in a highly reactive mode and cannot apply the critical thinking and cool-headed responsiveness skills that are necessary when facing Time and Attention, Situational, and/or Encounter Stressors.
Common "Mind Traps"
❖ Catastrophizing:
❖ “The “What Ifs” Rumination:
❖ “I Woulda, Coulda, Shouda”
❖ Exaggerating Negatives and Discounting Positives “
❖ All or Nothing/Black and White” Thinking
❖ Mind Reading
❖The ”You Shoulds”
❖ The Blame Game
❖ Perfectionism
❖ Negative Self Talk
❖ Self Deception
Suzanne Matthiessen's hour-long video class
on how to gain awareness and take actions to work strategically to
eliminate "mind traps" is free to watch at your convenience.
Featured Resource:
The image of the iceberg on the right is a close representation of the percentages of our thinking processes that are conscious and unconscious - with the submerged portion of the iceberg being the proportion of our thoughts, choices, actions and behaviors that are unconsciously (and often knee-jerk reactively) engaged in. As you can see, we can get caught in a perpetual cycle of unhealthy and unproductive coping choices that we are completely unaware of yet still trapped by. The good news is we can choose to learn how to gain self-awareness and take purposeful actions to break this cycle and develop new, upgraded behavioral patterns that can have a positive impact upon those very same people we had an adverse impact upon.
Applying the Tools
Healthy Self-Care practices are not Self-Indulgent and can strengthen your overall resiliency and "stress immunity."
They are an essential component of any Stress Readiness, Responsiveness and Resiliency Toolkit, but must be a part of an integrated, holistic approach. Please visit the Self-Care Practices and Tools Section of The Toolkit for actions you can take.