NEWS ROUND-UP
Climbing the 10 steps to mental health resilience
Oakwood Training and ORIS Media have teamed up to provide a virtual wellbeing session for businesses.
With the millions of hours and words already expended on the ongoing coronavirus crisis, we could be heading for a mental health pandemic as our over-anxious reaction to 24/7 rolling media exposure replaces our rational approach to the physical risk of contagion.
This is the view of Terry Streather, author and mental health and wellbeing expert, who argues we need to proactively manage and control that anxiety in order to build mental health resilience rather than negatively reacting to over-zealous and over-sharing media reporting.
He argues that when all is said and done, more is said than done and that is why taking back control of the narrative is part of a new series of virtual mental health resilience coaching packages from his company, Oakwood Training, aimed at every retail colleague - from the Board to the shop floor.
The session focuses on '10 steps to mental health resilience', all of which are aimed at resonating with the individual in terms of managing their anxiety and boosting their wellbeing during this difficult time.
These include relaxation strategies, rationing exposure to social media feeds and re-assessing the connection between our physical and mental health, managing our coping strategies and our all-important connections with others, as well as focusing upon past successes and understanding the differences between what we can control and letting go of what we can’t.
“Stress is understandable at this time,” said Terry, a former police officer with Leicestershire Police.
“I’ve been holding a series of virtual mental health resilience training workshops over the last few weeks and I hear cases where 97 per cent of staff have been furloughed or other cases where 10 per cent of the workforce is trying to run whole companies.
“As human beings we like patterns that we can predict and at the moment there is a feeling of a lack of control, so we need to proactively re-take it by changing the narrative. We need to build resilience and make sure we have enough in the tank to cope.
“Darwin is often misquoted – he never said survival of the fittest, but the survival of those that are most adaptable to change. This way we can focus on past successes and how we coped before. We need to re-evaluate our circle of influence and worry only about the things we have control over. You need to be able to re-connect with your rational thinking brain and reduce the influence of the emotional chimp.
“Stress is a perfectly normal part of daily life. When we go to the gym we are stressing our bodies to make them healthy, but we also know that rest and re-cooperation is as important as the exercise for our wellbeing – it’s where we get our strength.
“There is a big difference between stress management and resilience as the latter is three times more effective. We can help build this resilience and allow people to re-take control of their wellbeing,” he added.
The session lasts for 45 minutes and will be hosted via the Zoom platform:
Wednesday 6th May at 16:00 - Click here to join the session
For further information on any of the sessions, please contact info@orismedia.eu
