Hi all,
This week has been a challenging week for me as the clinic's process and planning keep changing due to the COVID-19 concerns.
It's been almost a month since the governor Polis had ordered for Coloradans to stay-at-home and over a month since this country had declared a state of emergency.
Yet I feel like I'm still finding myself the day of the announcement while I'm also starting to feel exhausted.
Hans Seyle, an endocrinologist back in the 50s, would say I'm experiencing what he calls a physiological response pattern of stress based on his general adaptation syndrome model which looks like this (see full article here):
He would say that I initially reacted to the stress of COVID-19 fiasco by being hyper-vigilant (aka the "alarm" phase) and was doing "alright" during the "resistance" stage.
But eventually I am running out of gas and enter the "exhaustion" phase.
Does this picture look familiar to any of you?
If so, I would like to share a simple and powerful hypnosis trick that I use with my patients:
Change channels in your brain: Sometimes I find myself feeling "stuck" in certain situations, thoughts, or images. It's almost like I am stuck watching a really bad TV show, and your remote control (or Alexa or Siri these days) is MIA! Well the good news is that you can create your own special remote control (or Alexa/Siri command) so that you can change the channel in your brain anytime, anywhere, with no one around. The new channels can be comedy, cooking, beautiful nature (planet earth, anyone?), friendship, love, you name it. With the special remote control, you can switch the channel or make the unpleasant channel muted or deleted if you want. It's based on a concept of shifting your attention because only YOU can control your own attention, so why not control it to your benefit?
What's your remote control look like? And what channels would you rather watch?
Until next time...be well:)