Page 7 - DUT Conduit Aug/Sept 2021

EWP’ WEBINAR FOCUSES ON MANAGING ONE S MENTAL HEALTH DURING A CRISIS
Waheeda Peters
The Employee Wellness Programme (EWP) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) recently hosted an online webinar titled Enhancing Your Coping Strategies in a Time of Crisis.
The much-anticipated webinar was facilitated by E WP manager Samantha Rajcoomar and the main speaker was psychologist Nandisa Tushini, who is in private practice in Pietermaritzburg. She is a registered psychotherapist focused on providing individual counselling for employees. She specialises in work-related stress, women’s issues and HI V/ AIDS, is interested in academic work, and advises corporations on mental health issues.
Rajcoomar relayed that it was no secret that this has been a difficult year, and it is only half over. “Indeed, we are living in unprecedented times. Our mental health has taken a further beating with the unfolding of recent events. As we navigate the waters of uncertainty amid COVID-19 as well as the recent unrest, we have to ensure that we are swimming instead of sinking. It has become normal to experience mixed emotions, at times feeling hopeful and others hopeless, vulnerable and fragile,” she said.
She further added that increased reactivity and arousal such as hyper-vigilance has become the order of the day. She conveyed that one should not feel guilty or troubled if one is struggling to cope during this period of confusion and sometimes chaos.
“Whether directly or indirectly affected, processing one’s emotions can be very traumatic, especially after experiencing pain or seeing one’s colleagues and loved ones feeling pain, loss and trauma. These issues have a strong negative impact on our mental health. This is associated with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and sometimes even results in resorting to unhealthy practices as coping mechanisms.
Denial is common as many of us try to minimise the impact of our current experiences. Shame is also very pervasive as many do not want to look weak. Remember that there is help out there,” she said.
Tushini indicated that during times of chaos and confusion, when lives have been put in disorder, every news headline and conversation borders on the traumatic. Refocusing, resting and recovery be-comes one’s priority. Also, one might find oneself more fatigued and preoccupied than normal, which may result in not functioning optimally.
“One of the major stresses is that it’s not only us as parents who are going through everything but our children are starting to be people that you don’t even recognise; they have emotional health issues. It starts with matriculants who go through the most anxiety. In the past, they have had all the support in school, from their peers and their teachers and now with COVID-19, we as parents have had to take over that role,” she said.
She explained that when looking at psychological crises, a lot of time what goes
on externally and why that can stress a person out is looked at. She indicated that it is more to do with psychological developments from stage to stage in what is happening in peoples’ lives and how it can affect the general ability to cope with stresses.
She spoke of the ways in which people can learn to cope, especially if they have not done well in a previous stage of development. You must learn how to adapt, and give yourself confidence to move to the next stage of development. “As psychologists, we try to look at finding the actual difficulties you are having. This is the theory that forms the basis of how we treat and help a person to cope with their mental health problems,” she said.
Tushini conveyed that she mostly uses Eric Ericson’s psychosocial stages of development, which focuses on the resolution of different crises to become a successful, complete person. It looks at from infancy to adulthood, and during each stage, the person experiences a psychosocial crisis that could have a positive or negative outcome for personality development.
“ When you come to therapy and see a psychologist, we look at one problem at a time but at the same time when you have overwhelming symptoms, we will put you on medication. I would say let’s medicate so that your body gets back to itself. The next step in therapy is to see what’s going on developmentally. The fact that you are feeling so alone in your pain and anxiety and you can’t tell
anyone means that something happened with your intimacy needs when you were much younger. What has happened before is that you have trusted someone with information and they didn’t get help,” she said.
“If you’re not at the stage where you need to see a psychologist then get organised, make sure that you are physically healthy; see your doctor and tell them everything that’s going on and make sure that you are fine,” she said.
The next step is to assess whether you are able to get organised. What happens when you suffer from anxiety and depression is that you have a lot of intrusive thoughts. “If you feel that you are not doing your job well, take two days off to organise yourself and your space. Speak to your manager and say, ‘I am really struggling with this.’ Whatever you can control at work, control it and create a timetable that helps you to do all of that,” said Tushini.
“So, you are actually going to say, ‘I am not going to struggle with the things that I can’t change in the first hours of the day. I’m creating a boundary to say that I am not going to stress about this (this goes with your family, children and friends). We’ve got to be able to create the boundary that says I cannot deal with anybody’s emergency right now, unless it’s my children or spouse,” she said.
Thusini emphasised that people need to organise their life so that even with children,
they can have one hour to deal with their stress and send them off to school and then sit down and start their work.
“Keep moving; every hour you need to take 10 minutes to stand up and move about because we are sedentary. You need to just challenge your body to do the next best thing, which is a natural way to let your body produce serotonin. So, try to exercise at least three times a week for 20 minutes’ minimum at a time,” she said.
She further stressed that accomplishing the smallest tasks can seem like a chore or an impossibility, and also amid the culture of the everyday hustle, it is easy to internalise this and feel distressed. “If there was ever a time to give yourself a break and mind your mental health, it is now,” she said.
Rajcoomar thanked Thusini for her valuable strategies and coping tools and urged all colleagues to practice self-care.
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