BEAT the Stress, Fool
by Gleb Kalinin
Stress is very often chaos, uncertainty, lack of structure. It's good when you can counter it with something very structured and understandable. American culture has produced a huge number of "toolkits" for dealing with acute and chronic stress of the "do one, do two, do three" kind. I'll talk about some of them, and I'll start with the Beat The Stress Fool approach.
Important: This text does not contain medical advice and cannot replace professional help.
The BTSF approach was developed by Michael Lauria of EMCrit, an American medical collective and publishing group made up of intensive care and emergency medicine physicians. Emergency physicians face tremendous stress all the time, and without any pandemic. Dr. Doug McGuff says of it this way: "On any sunny day, you walk through the glass doors of the ward and you find yourself in a real hellhole. A state of panic does nothing to promote adequate rational decision making, so any physician must be able to regain control of his prefrontal cortex, the thinking, BTSF is an algorithm that helps with this.
B - Breath, T - Talk, S - See, F - Focus.
1. B - Breath. Breath.
The controlled breathing cycle works as a brake in situations where the adrenaline train is going too fast. Controlled breathing can reduce the tone of the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system.
EMCrit recommends "square" and tactical breathing - enter for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, repeat several times. Even 2-4 cycles can have a noticeable parasympathetic activation effect and interrupt 2 potentially harmful breathing patterns: fast and deep, leading to hyperventilation, and shallow, in which the body does not get enough oxygen. You can also use other breathing exercises (breathing with lengthened exhalation or 5 breathing fingers).
Breathing even affects the clarity of vision - the retina is very sensitive to oxygenation of the blood.
2. T - Talk. Talk.
Your thoughts affect your well-being, this is not a figure of speech, but a medical fact. Practice positive inner dialogue - it leads to better results (this is the most researched part of the whole Beat The Stress Fool protocol). Internal monologue can be motivational (say to yourself "I can do it, I can do it, I can do it"), or it can be an internal recitation of an instruction, a sequence of actions. Our well-being depends on how we assess the situation - whether we judge it to be dangerous. Use cognitive reframing--transforming the perception of specific negative events into a more positive one. Like all elements of consistency, this skill should be practiced in as neutral circumstances as possible, not when you are in the "red zone. This skill can be very difficult to develop on your own, since cognitive distortions are completely "transparent" to us, and you may need outside help to detect them, such as a therapist working in a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy approach. Memo on cognitive distortions.
3. S - See. Visualize.
Visualize an event or procedure. MRI studies show that the brains of people who visualize a sequence of actions use the same neural networks as those who actually perform that action. If you have some complicated procedure ahead of you (and in a stressful situation any action like going to the store can be complicated) - go through the visualization step by step, in a clear sequence. Repeat the visualization several times, adding details, including your own feelings about the action. Visualize the most successful option, the perfect sequence.
4. F - Focus. Focus.
One of the most unpleasant effects of stress is a decreased ability to focus on an object, unproductive thinking about extraneous topics, worrying about what will happen if something goes wrong. Training in concentration, the ability to focus becomes critical. Mindfulness meditation with focus on the object helps a lot in this, but other ways can be used as well. Attention can be focused and narrow, like a flashlight beam, or unfocused, broad. For most concrete, non-abstract tasks, focused attention is much better. The doctors at EMCRIT suggest using a trigger - such as "Focus" or simply "Focus" - to switch to focus mode.
Depending on the situation, one may use all of the elements of the sequence (breathing - positive inner dialogue - visualizations - focus), or only some of them. As with any skill, it is better to practice each individual element in a situation where the need for the skill is not present or is not very high. For example, positive internal monologue instruction and visualization can be practiced on a simple sequence of activities like washing dishes or taking out the trash, breathing and focusing can be practiced in meditation. An animated GIF of "square" breathing can be saved in your phone and opened when you are overwhelmed with emotion and panic.