Ways of dealing with stress, decision making, crisis management during the Corona Virus.

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. 

1. You have interacting remotely down and you can pivot and adapt to the need to do so. Your tech confidence gives you an advantage.
2. 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. 
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.