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Dr Sarb Johal

9 Sep, 15 tweets, 2 min read

[WELLBEING THREAD] Keep going Auckland! Thanks for your work. Rest of NZ: keep vigilant, scan, , stay distant, book a vax & test if you’ve symptoms. Here’s 5 ways to boost your wellbeing through the weekend and beyond.

Living the good life, flourishing, joy, & purpose: Is it possible to experience any of these in the middle of a chaotic world and in lockdown? Yes, we can. The PERMA model shows us how

These five elements or components (PERMA; Seligman, 2012) are; Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning & Accomplishments. Here’s what you can do to boost each one of these:

1. Positive emotion is much more than mere ‘happiness.’

Positive emotions include hope, interest, joy, love, compassion, pride, amusement, and gratitude. Ways to build positive emotion include:

* Spending time with people you care about

* Doing activities you enjoy

* Reflecting on things you are grateful for and what is going well in your life

2. Engagement happens when the perfect combination of challenge and skill/strength is found. People have also called this ‘flow’. Ways to increase engagement include:

* Take part in activities that you really love, where you lose track of time when you do them.

* Spend time in nature, watching, listening, and observing what happens around you.

* Identify and learn about your character strengths, and do things you excel at

3. Relationships are positive when you feel supported, loved, and valued by others. Sharing good news or celebrating success strengthens bonds and better relationships.

Responding enthusiastically to others, particularly in close or intimate relationships, increases intimacy, wellbeing, and satisfaction. Cultivate your relationships:

* Join an online class that interests you.
Make sure it includes some group interaction.
* Ask questions of the people you don’t know well to find out more about them.

* Get in touch with people you have not spoken to or connected with in a while.

4. A sense of meaning is guided by personal values, and people who report having purpose in life live longer and have greater life satisfaction and fewer health problems.

Having a purpose in life helps individuals focus on what is really important in the face of significant challenge or adversity. Ways to build meaning include:

* Get involved in a cause or organisation that matters to you.

* Try new, creative activities to find things you connect with.

* Think about how you can use your passions to help others.

5. A sense of accomplishment comes from working toward and reaching goals, mastering a new skill, and having self-motivation to finish what you set out to do. So, reflect on your recent successes and look for creative ways to celebrate your achievements.

We've got this NZ. Stick to the plan now, and it gives us more options for our future. [ENDS]

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More from @sarb

Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

26 Aug

[WELLBEING THREAD] Preparing for lockdown decision announcement today. Frustration, irritation with yourself and others, and distress are common experiences when we are under chronic stress and it feels like there is no way out.

When your stress hormones are continually pumping because your threat system is active, it’s hard to see things as they are.

Some research suggests that when people experience frustration in the day, they tend to have more frightening dreams at night. It’s as if the mind is trying to process and make sense of experiences we find psychologically distressing when we are awake.

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Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

25 Aug

[WELLBEING THREAD] With 2 days til the next NZ Alert Level decisions, if you’re going to feel tempted to cut corners + other risky behaviour, it’ll be around now. Here’s what you need to know to stick to the plan to STAY HOME + stay safe to protect yourself and others

Sticking to lockdown rules can be hard. It takes self-control. After exerting self-control for a few days, you can feel less motivated to continue (although you could do it if you REALLY had to). How can you find that motivation?

For example, you’ve been sticking to your eating plan all day with a healthy breakfast and lunch, and even resisted the donuts being offered around work in the afternoon.

Read 13 tweets

Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

24 Aug

[WELLBEING THREAD] Lethargy and stress-related fatigue: Lockdowns can cause temporary stress that can be painful but bearable. But as you continue, with chronic stress begins to take its toll on your body

Maybe you can’t sleep, or you’re sleeping too much. Perhaps you’ve got headaches where you never used to have them, or they’ve got worse. Maybe you digestive system has gone haywire. Or perhaps you find yourself irritable or burst into tears and you can’t quite figure out why

All of these are signs of chronic stress.
But another sign is feeling constantly tired, feeling slow, and finding it difficult to plan and make decisions. Add all those other signs together as well as the toll on your physiology of constant stress hormones pumping through you...

Read 9 tweets

Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

23 Aug

[WELLBEING THREAD - LONG] Read before / after Cabinet lockdown announcement at 4pm Monday 23/8. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get when the future feels uncertain. It can be about things we hope for over the longer term, our imagined futures.

This kind of grief can feel very confusing. Our primal mind senses that something bad is ‘out there’, but we can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety & makes us feel like worse is yet to come.
So what can you do when you feel those waves of dread, loss or grief approaching?

A useful starting point is to understand the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although not everyone goes through all stages in a simple process, it’s interesting to observe how these stages have played out in our responses to Covid19

Read 15 tweets

Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

22 Aug

[WELLBEING THREAD] We've still go some time to go at Alert Level 4, NZ. Here's some tips to get you through the next few days:

1. Limit your news intake. Try to limit yourself to checking the news 2 or 3x times a day. Find out what you need to know and then get out of your newsfeed. That way you won’t miss any important announcements or updates, but you also help to manage any anxiety and overwhelm

And do not do your infrequent news check-in just before bedtime. Give yourself a good buffer of at least a couple of hours between checking the news and the time when you want to be calm and ready to sleep.

Read 9 tweets

Dr Sarb Johal

@sarb

20 Aug

[THREAD] Staying the lockdown course: One of the difficulties of lockdown is staying focused on the collective goal and avoiding stay-at-home fatigue. This occurs after a period of restriction, when we start to get cabin fever and feel tempted to break the rules.

During the initial lockdowns, one study following cellphone data showed that people started going out more frequently and travelling longer distances from home, after they passed that one-month mark of being confined to their home.

One simple explanation for stay-at-home fatigue that has been used by economists is called ‘diminishing marginal utility’. During the first few days in lockdown, you probably had the opportunity to do things in the house that you were fairly enthusiastic about.

Read 17 tweets

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