<aside> 👉🏽 You may well be thinking about how you can support your teams during this very sad time in Eastern Europe. We’ve asked one of our therapists Graham to set out some practical approaches that may help.
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Just as we seem to have moved past the worst days of Covid we find ourselves facing the uncertainty of war in Europe. For many of us trying to maintain some semblance of emotional balance is being stretched to its limits.
Inevitably, your employees are going to be affected in their work by events that occupy their minds, work-related or not, so here are some ideas to help support your teams in navigating through these difficult times.
To get the most benefit, make sure you use them too because people tend to do what we model rather than what we tell them.
Your teams will want to talk about what's happening because that's a good way for us to process our thoughts and help us to create perspective. Encourage it, but in the right places, and not without limits.
Be willing to engage with your teams on the issues that are upsetting them but don't create a self-fulfilling cycle of fear by pulling one another down and allowing discussions to seep into everything you're doing.
Also, suggest that your teams limit the extent to which they talk to one another about the events that are making them fearful because it's easy to trigger someone who is trying to calm their anxious mind without realising that you're doing it
Tell your teams that if they are finding it hard to manage their anxiety they'll get the most appropriate and effective help by talking to a professional, ie Spill.
You'll be lucky to hear much that lifts your spirits in the news at the moment so limit your exposure to it in order to regain some emotional strength.
I check once in the morning and once in the evening. If anything I need to know about happens in between I know I'll hear about it.
No good will come from constant analysis of a situation nobody can accurately read.
Don't let yourself spend too much time on social media either because the randomness of posts can actually be quite triggering if you're watching someone make a pizza in a sandwich toaster one moment and then seeing tanks roll through city streets the next.
Be kind to yourself and avoid overstimulation.
We all want certainty but there isn't any. It's worth remembering this.
If we can accept that uncertainty is all there is we find ourselves able to manage much more easily.