Even a Change for the Worse Can Be Helpful
This may well be a time in which you are going through a major change. Certainly, the adjustments that we have all had to make with the coming of COVID may qualify. For many, the shift from working at the office to working at home has been major. But this is especially so for people like nurses, who have had to work under difficult and often dangerous conditions. And teachers, who have had to adapt not only to online teaching but, worse still, a hybrid model where they are simultaneously teaching to some students in the classroom and others who are online.
How Can a Change Help?
It can enable us to shed unwanted habits that have typically been impossible to get rid of. For instance, with understaffing, a nurse might be unable to do her job the way she wants to, and may suffer moral distress. She feels guilty that she hasn't been able to give her patients all that they need. She shouldn't feel guilty because it isn't her fault, but feelings of guilt have become locked in as a habit. (Yes, a feeling is a habit.)
A Change Shakes Us Up
When a change necessitates doing something differently, it causes a pause to occur between the stimulus and the usual automatic response. A nurse, instead of just going into a room, now has to put on extra gear. A pause before remembering this may last for just a microsecond, but that is enough to unlock the old habit, and if a new response is available, it can be locked in; a response such as the knowledge that the working conditions are not her fault, and that she need not feel any guilt.
When a new link has been formed, the consequences can be overwhelming. Imagine being able to feel free of guilt! The new solution, feeling free of guilt, must be replayed in the mind many times until its novelty wanes; only then can it enter awareness.
The Emotional Comfort® Tool Can Help
The regular use of self-hypnosis, as described in the Emotional Comfort® Tool, can hasten this process, as well as providing periods of peacefulness and calm.
GET THE EMOTIONAL COMFORT® Tool