Returning to work after the holidays can be mentally draining

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Returning to work after the holidays can be mentally draining
Returning to work after the holidays can be mentally draining
Anonim

It has happened to everyone that they are not in the mood, they are upset, sad, grumpy with others. Depression is also very common. "To get out of it more painlessly, keep in touch with people, share! Immersion in the problem has no solution, it is constant tension and anxiety", says the psychologist Emilian Krumov in a special interview for "Doctor". Returning to work after long holidays is also traumatic for many. Here's what the specialist advises

Mr. Krumov, sending off the old and welcoming each new year causes euphoria in our country, and this is logical, but isn't it deceptive?

- I think this euphoria is necessary because it gives us more confidence to achieve what we otherwise put off or don't want to get into. Therefore, during this period it is good to trust our feelings, our intuition, our desires and relax. Let's allow this process to happen. It can be deceptive when we are completely unaware of the realities around us, when we don't hear other people, when we expect things to happen by themselves. When a person stands in some expectation that something will happen to him without participating, without making any effort. Yes, especially at the beginning of January it really feels like that, like we've been cheated, like we've run out. But on holidays we become more open, we strive more for others around us, we connect more, regardless of who and how, and with what people he lives. We are more inclined to help, to do good to others. It's not cheating, it's that energy that the holiday gives. It nurtures our connection with others and facilitates the decision-making that comes from that confidence we talked about. More importantly, however, the big change is within ourselves. I believe, and from personal experience, that each of us must realize how with his behavior, with his staring, with his suspiciousness, he prevents what he wants from happening. Everyone needs to find confidence in themselves to stop such behavior. Because with this behavior and attitude towards life and towards other people, a person moves away from the things he wants.

Is this easy to achieve?

- In my counseling and therapeutic practice, I don't really have such a good example, except for one or two cases of a very big, abrupt change. Change cannot be fast enough to be sustainable. But anyway, at some point one has to just stop the negative thoughts, even though they will inevitably appear from time to time. However, there is no need to give food or energy to this type of thinking, because in reality no one is interested in "looking for a calf under the ox". Then

one begins to find meaning

and to see that other people are not necessarily negative.

Do we realize, however, that to a large extent everything depends on ourselves or do we rely on luck, on the good confluence of circumstances?

- It is necessary to preserve our ability to appreciate reality. This is what separates us from people with mental illness. When we are aware of the reality, even if we expect luck from outside, we have to do something too. In reality, luck is in our capabilities. At the very least, we should desire this thing, think in this direction. It is important that a person allows what he wants to happen in his mind. Sometimes it is complicated, for example, a person is in financial difficulties, how to allow yourself to think more broadly. But believe me, luck happens when we start thinking this way.

Mr. Krumov, in one of your articles you explain that returning to work after holidays is quite difficult. What does it depend on?

- Not only is it hard, but sometimes the thought of it can depress and crush us a lot. It largely depends on what kind of people we interact with at work. This is a very big topic.

In this regard, let me ask you how you would define the behavior of a person who quits after 20 years in one workplace?

- I would call it a brave decision. Because if this person is on the edge, he can bring himself an illness. From the constant tension, a physical problem will arise at some point. Look, even if you love your job, you're going back to a place you don't want to be. Or you waited a whole year for the vacation to get away from there for at least a month. The stress is so great that it is better to get away than to ruin your he alth. I'm not giving this as advice, I'm just explaining the consequences.

It is true that many people do not dare to take such a step, they stand and get sick. And it's good when the body first starts to give a sign. It is worse for the psyche to give this sign. The sooner we listen to our body, the better. Staying in such a job is not worth the illness. A perfect example in this regard is the world-famous Steve Jobs. The guy starts this company and then gets kicked out of it.

His illness is a very powerful response

and on a mental, not a physical level. Standing in such an environment is very dangerous. So yes, even the thought of going back to such a job is extremely stressful.

- Are we not giving too much importance to stress, is it the sole basis of all these states we fall into? What is stress?

- It may seem strange to you, but stress in its theoretical version is valuable, i.e. our body is under tension, but a he althy tension. The other term is distress, which is used much less often and means that the stress is already beginning to cause first physical and then mental problems. Then the body can no longer stand up, the psyche cannot cope and the reaction is much more severe.

But otherwise stress is he althy as long as it is stimulating. I want to emphasize something else that I think is very important, and that is that people should learn to share. With relatives, with friends, with colleagues even. The idea is to get these negative thoughts, this inner tension out. Not to repeat myself, but these things at some point appear first in our body, then in our psyche. Unfortunately, our culture is such that we tend to give advice like: "Get up, walk, tighten up, don't spoil yourself, etc."

And the person is depressed, he is oppressed and cannot stand up on his own. That's why it's worth saying it one more time: the important thing is to be able to share it, to be able to talk to someone. That's the other downside in our culture that we still have a bit of a hard time sharing such things. People are afraid of exposing themselves.

Every conflict that happens to us in life is an opportunity to revise, to see our reaction, to be able to readjust it. If we start stumbling that we are always right and others are bad, it does not give us the opportunity to think about the problem and discuss it. I will say it once again, I know it from personal experience - promise yourself not to look for any deep meaning in the behavior of the other person. Accept that he is, he

this is how he wants things to happen

And you will see for yourself what lightness will come to your soul.

Mr. Krumov, I ask you to discuss another condition, which I think is abused - depression. Don't we confuse it with fatigue, with sadness?

- Depression is the most voluminous, the most encompassing term of manifestations and states, as in its extremes, respectively, are mental deviations and diseases. However, there are depressive reactions that do not mean mental illness at all. It's just that the person is very depressed, he's left without a drop of energy, he's literally in a hole.

But really, the depression described in more modern disease classifications covers a very wide range. We may be depressed as a reaction, the so-called reactive depression, however, this is not a mental illness. This is a state of mind that cannot currently process some conflict or problem. And so one loses strength. Depressed people are more distracted, weaker in strength and energy. But it is not terrible, it is not something extreme and unbearable. It is not even necessary to take medicine. This is my psychological interpretation. We psychologists are different from psychiatrists, and very often that is the conflict. I do not work with diagnoses and medicines.

Yes, but don't you think it's good for a person to take a pill every now and then to calm down, without abusing of course?

- That's right, but the pill is a "crutch", it takes us away from the conflict for a while. The point is to control oneself, because if we start only with drugs, it will become like drugs. And this completely and totally shifts the thinking and the way to find the solution. And it's no longer adaptive, it's not coping, it's silencing. I mean, that's not the way to go about things. If we have to sum it up - depression should not startle and scare people, we can all be depressed at some point.

How to get out of it as painlessly as possible? This is more important

- In any case, depressed people, as long as they are not in the most severe psychotic form, are people who despite their problem

keep in touch with others

So, in order to get out of depression more painlessly, the most correct thing is to keep in touch with people. In any case, they can give us good feedback. To give us a good appreciation of who we are, which we need when we are in a depressed state. Very often we forget that we are valuable to others, when they give it to us as a sign, then they can already support us. But it cannot happen if we move away and do not want to contact them because we do not feel well and we will expose ourselves. The goal is not to let this condition disconnect us from others.

Anyway, I think that despite everything, we Bulgarians were afraid to go to a psychologist…

- Yes, it is, especially in recent years. Both from western culture and movies if you will, people have started to pay attention to their mental he alth. I have clients who directly come and say: I know this is not a disease, but I want to do something for myself. It is not necessary for a person to be in some terminal phase of an illness, when the stress has turned into something constantly acting and limiting both the person and the body, and only then to look for a psychologist. I notice that people are already turning to a psychologist for various problems, they also bring their children. Unlike before, now they come with the clear awareness that they cannot handle it, they are not experts, even more so - they cannot be neutral with their close people. And that's why they seek psychological support, which works. Many colleagues have already trained well, there are standards. We have been trying for years to create standards not only for counseling but also for therapeutic work. There are also external standards that operate, ie. aid in this regard is increasingly effective.

Mr. Krumov, one more thing that bothers me somewhat. It's about positive thinking. Isn't it overexposed, and to what extent can we afford it, so that we don't suddenly find ourselves somewhere in the clouds, far from reality?

- There was such a wave in the last months of last year when fellow psychologists came out with such opinions that it is really a delusion. Yes, this Western American model: "Lazarus, get up, go", such self-lifting and positive thinking techniques sound a bit far-fetched to me too. But it is an important category. And not so much that a person deceives himself and lies with such sentences as "I take a pill and say to myself 100 times "I'm fine, I'm fine, nothing's wrong with me". All this can have an effect for a while. Because when a person runs away from solving the case, the conflict, runs away from awareness, it is not permanent. Positive thinking is good, but the point is not to impose it as the only solution, because it is not about awareness. Yes, what you say about the clouds rather takes us away from reality, although it helps. I'm not that extreme, and yet it shouldn't be our guide all the time. - You participate in many psycho-social support projects with different groups of patients - with diabetes, with parents of children with newly diagnosed diabetes, with epilepsy. My question is, to what extent does this psycho-social support help them improve their condition, or heal? - What I have seen, especially with diabetics, is that they are greatly helped by such psycho-social support. Many times, due to their physical limitations, they become disabled in their thoughts. And these are mostly young people. This support gives them the feeling that they are not seriously ill. Yes, diabetes is a dangerous disease, but it is not a permanently irreversible type of disability. Working with such people, especially young people within 20-30 years, because we also use good techniques, I saw that these people begin to believe that they are not very different.

They don't want to be snubbed and pitied. For example, there was a case with a boy aged 8 or 9. And because his mother, very scared for him, went every class to measure his sugar and asked the teachers not to include him in any activities, this made the child feel bad. Because his classmates also misbehaved with him for these reasons, they made fun of him. That is, such a youth, such a young person becomes so crippled in his thinking that he begins to feel very rejected indeed. And diabetes is not the kind of disease that implies such withdrawal, closing in on oneself. Lifestyle changes can be made to reduce the effects of diabetes. But he is not a mental illness, he is not a derangement.

And in this project, it is quite long, such changes are visible. People start thinking differently. We recommend that parents of diabetic children give them a little more freedom, because they become more controlling from worry and fear. I also worked with other children who had epilepsy. There, the change is greater, personal change can also occur. They had a huge need for our support, we communicated daily, we took them here and there so that they would not be isolated from life, to stay a little closer to other people. Yes, they have big problems, it's dangerous, you can't walk a child like that around the streets calmly, because he might have a seizure. But these people have a great need to keep this feeling that they are not different, that it is not so scary. There is a positive change from just such a social activity.

In conclusion of this interesting conversation: can you name three, or five, or two basic things to adhere to in order to be in harmony with ourselves, in the most banal way?

- I judge by myself and in recent years and I can say: the more you stare at the problem, the more you begin to suffer and think about it, the more you get deeper and there is no way out. Let's figure out what our strengths are and what drives us forward. And to focus on what we can give, where we are worth more, where we are more useful and valuable. Because otherwise immersion in the problem has no solution, it is constant tension and anxiety.

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