Psycology of Collective Crisis !!

Date of session: 2nd July 2020

 In the second EBSB Webinar on " Psychology of collective crisis ",  presented by Prof. Ankita Sharma, Associate Professor at the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences at IITJ, we got to learn the essential things to keep with us in the times of Covid. 

"Situating in oneself in existing reality"

She said we need to give ourselves a bit to grieve. Lockdown is not a sabbatical. It's a time we can learn and develop ourselves for the future but at the same time, it's ok to not learn and rest. 

It is a kind of Secondary Pandemic?

She gave the reference of Dr. Leanne Williams, Prof. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine who explained in one of the articles "How Understanding your Biotype can help you unlock your Mental Health During a Pandemic"

It focused on identifying personal signs of stress. 

Whenever we face a problem, we try to defend ourselves. Identifying several symptoms:

1. Rumination - Rumination means getting stuck in the loop of brooding. 

                        - Self Reflection 

2. Negative Bias - When a person is susceptible to negative information and the capacity to receive positive information gets shut down.

3. Threat Response - When a person is always in alarm mode (fight or flight response).

4. Anxious Avoidance - Becoming hyper-sensitive to internal and external changes leading to feeling overwhelmed as a result one goes in the state of avoidance.

The Experience of Uncertainty - 

1. Pathologically judging your emotions and responses - Pathologizing your responses increases your anxiety. A person is reacting in a normal way to an abnormal situation. 

2. Catastrophing and Blowing situations out of proportion - What evidence supports your automatic thoughts and what not?

3. Anxious behavior - 

Dr. Ankita quotes a very famous statement here "What appears to be calamities are often the sources of fortune".  It is said that the worst of things and times, sometimes bring the best out of us. 

The depth of struggle determines the height of success.

Further, in Dr. Ankita's words, Resilience acts as the Psychological Resource for growth in adversity. 

Resilience is often defined as bouncing back. 

This definition may be fine for minor challenges but it is questionable for more serious ones. 

Sometimes, you physically can't bounce back. In reality, you are not able to bounce back from hardship.

Demonstrating Resilience 

According to the speaker, we should not dwell and keep ourselves stuck on the failures but rather we should acknowledge the situation, learn from our mistakes, and move forward. 

We need to be flexible and adapt to new circumstances. We must quickly thrive in constant change and should understand that life has its own ups and downs. 

Things change over time. A person's resilience factor may depend on many things from time, age, gender, culture, region, and even context. 

It may even vary within an individual. 

She quotes a very relevant statement, 

"A diamond is just a piece of charcoal that handled stress exceptionally well."

Dr. Ankita says that resilient people are much happier than the less resilient people. Resilience is about bouncing back. 

Resilience is mental toughness. It is the capacity which takes us through pain and helps us develop a higher capacity to fight with the stressful things. 

Resilience is the ability to recover from setbacks and adapt to challenging circumstances and is required to thrive and flourish. It is a foundational Psychological tool. 

"Stumbling Block"

Dr. Ankita referred to the  "ABC Model " by Dr. Martin Seligman, Prof. at the University of Pennsylvania. 

A : Adversity 

B : Belief

C : Consequences

As we are going from Adversity to Belief, if in between we put Resilience, then Belief changes. 

A person in adversity, feels that he is a Moron or an Idiot and can not do anything good but instead he should think that "Why that failure happened?"

We should find out the reasons and should solve them. 

ABCs of Resiliency

There is an ABCDE Model to develop resiliency. 

A (Adversity) - We need to describe the event objectively. 

                       - Answer the questions: who, what, where, when, and how?

That will give us truth statements because they focus solely on the facts. 

B (Beliefs) - A person needs to record his thoughts about the event. Why do you think it happened and your explanation of it?

- Observe and record what you were saying to yourself in the midst of the Adversity. 

-What was running through your mind?

-Write down the verbation and not worry about being polite.

C (Consequences) - Record your feelings and actions. 

- List all the emotions you experienced and as many reactions as you can identify. 

D (Dispute) - A person needs to question his belief. 

-Generate a piece of evidence to point out the inaccuracy in your beliefs or generate a more accurate/optimistic alternative belief. 

E (Energy) - We need to put all our positive energy to solve our problems. 

   

Things to keep in mind while developing resilience :

1. Have confidence in your abilities, at least assure yourself.

2. Make plans and act on those plans.

3. Understand that facing.

@ImpactWales tells us the importance of Self Compassion. We as human beings criticize ourselves a lot. We think we are not good enough. That never helps. We need to feed ourselves positively. 

Dr. Ankita said that we need to change our narrative and be more expressive.

In the present COVID scenario, we are existing in the Fear zones. We have the capacity to move from here. If we move from the Learning zone, further to the Growth zone and that is the Best Zone.

There are two kinds of things:

First, which we can control.

If we can control,  we need to give ourself a hug and to say that "It is ok" . 

Second, which we can not control.

Such kinds of things we need to put into the trash. 

Mr. Rohan Erande, the moderator for the session and a student at IITJ, further put forward a few questions on behalf of the audience.

Ques. What is a "Cognitive Thought"?

To which Dr. Ankita responded that Cognitive Thought is when our mind is not free. The feeling of not being in an open state. 

We need to identify the Source/ Reason for the Stress.

We need to practice the solution. and then we will be in less stress. 

Ques. How to practice "Mindfulness"?

Mindfulness is doing anything in which you are present in the moment without being Judgemental. 

Being in the moment while walking or listening to a song. 

In a mindful state, in any activity which we are doing, we start focusing on the activity and stop thinking about the bad. 

Ques. During the COVID times, a person is not able to go out, so how can he be productive while staying at home?

In response to this, Dr. Ankita asked the respective person in the audience that what is his definition of being productive as an individual and he responded that being a student, the bad mood, or the mood to not feel like reading. 

As a response to this, Dr. Ankita said that then you need to find the reason and then you can think of reducing that reason. By this, we can be able to lead to our solution and can be productive.