Decompress

Decompress #20, Expanding and unwinding

Anthony Back

After an intense day, it’s common to leave feeling depleted and contracted. But at that point, putting more and more effort to make yourself ‘relax’, can exacerbate that sense of contraction and easily turns into more problem solving. Instead, consider that powering down has a physical correlate: expansion. Research suggests that a different way to change the patterns of our brain activity from the task-oriented, me-focused work of the day to renewal is to contrast contraction to expansion. Which you can do in about 11 minutes.

Decompress #19, Offering a tribute

Anthony Back

As the number of health care workers who have become infected grows, we pause for a tribute. Can we recognize their contributions in a way that strengthens all of us?

Priming post-traumatic growth

Anthony Back

The media, while sympathetic to health care workers, has also been generating ominous predictions—the coming psychological trauma, for example. But while psychological sequelae are real, there is also another interesting phenomenon: post-traumatic growth. About half of the people who live through a traumatic event actually come through it feeling stronger and wiser. Could we prime ourselves for wisdom?

Decompress #17, Calling a truce on war metaphors

Anthony Back

We keep hearing that we’re at war: the surge is coming, crisis standards, peak engagement. Certainly those war metaphors grabbed everyone’s attention. But now, as we settle into something that is actually much different, it is worth stepping back to examine these metaphors, because they carry a lot of baggage. There’s a down side to being perpetually at war. And you don’t have to live like that.

Decompress #16, A moment of release

Anthony Back

Yesterday, NPR ran a story about front-line clinicians that described how a nurse would spend his hour commute home ‘haunted’ by all the stuff that he hadn’t been able to do. It’s totally understandable—we just shouldn’t valorize it as a coping strategy. Rehashing the day, in the form of rumination, can (unintentionally) create habitual patterns that make it more likely you’ll be wound up all evening and into the night. But there is a way to disrupt the rehash—and it’s about learning to reallocate your attention.

Decompress #15, Reconstituting our losses

Anthony Back

Right now, the media is full of stories about loss, we’re confronted with it at work, and then even when we get home we face the loss of small everyday pleasures. This is often called ‘grief work’, a term I’ve never really embraced. Not because dealing with losses isn’t work—it is indeed—but because the focus of work should not be about rehearsing the loss—the work should be about reconstituting what that person, or routine, or ritual brought forth in you. What can you call forth, as you power down for the evening?

Decompress #14, A self-inoculation of compassion

Anthony Back

“By the end of my shift,” this doctor writes, “every patient begins to blend into a single patient…..I can’t even keep track of them anymore.” What do you when you can’t deliver the care that you’ve dedicated your life to giving? The impulse to self-judge is pretty strong in many of us. That does not mean, however, that it constructive coping. There is an alternative, and your sustainability depends on it.

Decompress #13, Working with outrage & disgust

Anthony Back

What do you do with moral outrage? It turns out that the way we approach and hold our moral outrage can drain us, or motivate us. The pitfall, that drains us, is getting stuck in our heads. When what the research shows now is that moral outrage has a lot in common with other experiences of disgust — and disgust starts in the body. Today’s practice takes you from anger, to outrage — and then to action. So it doesn’t gnaw away at the time you need for renewal.

Decompress #12, Replenshing your courage

Anthony Back

My tendency after getting home from a long day is to plunge into the news—even though it just adds to the fear & uncertainty I’ve been dealing with all day. We all have a limit to this, and when we reach it, we hit a wall. But fear & depletion are not forgone conclusions. Today, we work on replenishing courage—and it doesn’t mean you have to pretend your fear doesn’t exist.

Decompress #11, Receiving the gratitude

Anthony Back

Somehow I picked up from my mentors that to acknowledge gratitude was prideful, or maybe dangerous. I was wrong, and new research backs that up. To push those thanks aside is to miss one of most meaningful satisfactions of a life in service to the well-being of our fellow humans. Today, take a moment to feel the gratitude. You’ve earned it.