This Insights article was contributed by Jillian Howden, MPA, Facilitator and Instructor at Leath HR Group.
The continuous slow spin of rain, day after day, this last September, created havoc in a way many can never plan on.
Those of us who stayed and fought stocked up on generators, food, water (and wine). Those of us who fled spent the next few weeks in places we did not plan to be, concerned with what would remain when we returned.
What is left to deal with is the complicated aftermath of a major storm, where everyone and every business has their own story to tell, and each of those are coping with Flo’s aftermath in their own way.
So many of life’s (mis)adventures, like Florence, create levels of stress and anxiety. We all cope differently. Some may deal in healthy manners, while others deal with stress and anxiety through detrimental means.
As we travel in our own minds, concerning ourselves with what we should have done differently and what we still need to do, we often forget to consider how we are dealing, how our employees are dealing and how the young people in our lives are dealing with everything.
I’m not just talking about Florence. Even without a hurricane, people’s lives can be turned upside-down on a dime and people face huge life changes unexpectedly. Moving schools, jobs, childbirth, marriage, divorce, death and health challenges are just a few of life’s big challenges.
It’s hard enough to sort everything out on our own, but are the people we support capable of dealing with stress?
Stress can be both positive and negative. Positive stress is a result of pursuits that cause excitement or feelings of success as a result of accomplishment. Negative stress tends to focus on our bodies’ reactions to tough situations that may build over time or may be an immediate situation, like a car accident.
Our sympathetic nervous system causes us to react in either a fight or flight mode, which increases the amount of adrenaline and norepinephrine running through our systems. It kickstarts cortisol, which is great if we’re confronting a lion but not so great if we have continuous levels of stress. When the body keeps releasing cortisol, it increases the chance of suppressing our immune systems and increasing blood pressure and sugar, among other serious consequences.
Here are a few pointers for how to deal with both types of stress as well all try to realign mentally post-Flo:
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