I am an expert on nonverbal communication and human behavior
and speak on dealing with and recovering from crisis, grief, and trauma.
Ways of dealing with stress, decision making, crisis management during the Corona Virus.
- You have interacting remotely down and you can pivot
and adapt to the need to do so. Your tech confidence gives you an
advantage.
- Call on your social media network for support and to
offer support. What can you do for others? What are the critical things you need? Ask, offer to help, follow through with that help and make your needs clear and specific.
- If you don’t already have multiple ways to connect to
treasured contacts make sure you have phone numbers and email addresses for people you interact with on social media. Do that today an also print it out and have a hard copy. You can print out a hard copy of your contacts on your phone easily. I would also advise you to send a list of your important close contacts to your friends, family, and neighbors should they need to reach you.
- You may want to initiate check-in rituals for your key
friends family and contacts where you just talk about your day and how you are. You may be used to checking in all the time and having full access but that may be overwhelming so I would suggest a ritual be it Good morning contact, dinner chat or a good night sleep well chat. To give you and you network a sense of continuity and security. That way throughout your day if
its stressful you know you can hold it together or if something good
happens you can look forward to sharing it in that check-in interaction.
Start all your interactions with a request for information about THEM,
don’t rush to share. It will really help to focus on other’s needs.
- Have something you can do at home that calms you and
gives you the pleasure that is in no way tech-related. A pet, a musical instrument and a how-to-play training book, an art kit with paints, pens and such, and or hard copy books. Plan on a ritual every night of doing
something that gets you off of tech and away from the news.
When you talk to other people
face to face you lay down neural pathways to the social centers of your
brain. Those pathways are strong and have “broad bandwidth” capacity and
are built to handle many situations including stress and decision making, The
more you interact interpersonally human to human in person and even on the
phone with access to a person’s vocal “paralanguage” the stronger the pathways
become.
But ANYONE who spends large
amounts of time on tech including millennials is making what are called quick
“shallow decisions”, such as, “I want this text. I don't want this text. ““I
want this website it’s interesting. I don't want this one it’s boring” “I want
this text.” “I don’t want to respond to this” These quick shallow decisions lay
down pathways to the ego centers of your brain and gives you a bit of high and
can make you feel superior to those around you but, the pathways formed from
shallow decisions are narrow fragile and are more likely to break down under
any stress and make it difficult to make decisions or take action that requires
interpersonal interaction without tech.
So millennials under stress know
that it may be more difficult to make decisions and perhaps more challenging to
do things that require phone or face to face interactions. So take a deep
breath if you feel like freeze up and know you can ask others for help. (if you
are older and grew up with-out tech prepare to counsel and coach on a more than
you ever have) If you are that millennial start creating good decision
making habits like pro and cons of your decisions, informing yourself and
seeking wise counsel on decisions. Heck look up, “Great ways to make
decisions.” You got this.
Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.
