Employee Assistance Program - Stress Management

Transcript:

I think we are going to go ahead and get started. My name is Laura Rifkin, I'm with the employee assistance program. I am sitting here in Georgia. I am going to do the line so I will not cure the background noise and we will have a good our together to talk about taking charge of stress.

I was asking people where they are calling in from. Looks like we have people from all across the -- country. I hope your weather across the country starting to warm up. We are finally going to get in the 60s here in Georgia which is very late for us. Normally we are much warmer. It will be nice to have a little bit of springtime.

I am from the home office of the EAP consultants, right outside of Atlanta. All the different divisions of Department of Interior asked us to do this training. Is training will be recorded today, it was recorded yesterday and one of the two versions will be on your website somewhere. We're not sure exactly where. Everyone will get the e-mail to notify you of when this training has been posted.

If after the training or during the training you have any questions about stress management or stress management resources, Rebecca who is the host and sent out the e-mail links to you, she is with your IT department, she asks that you do not send her the questions come that you get back in touch with us and we will be sure to help you with any stress management if you need counseling or just need any resources, we are glad to assist you.

I will open the lines of about three times during the presentation to give you a chance to ask questions so as I am talking to Dave feel free to write a question down and I will do my best to respond to it when we open up the lines. We are going to be talking just for an hour about stress and as you know, you can do a stress management workshop all day so we are going to make this a very practical workshop for you and hopefully by the end of this training you're going to get a better understanding of what causes stress, how to reduce and better cope with your stresses and then we're going to make a plan together of a way to take control of the stress and determine what kind of stress you are dealing with and take an action plan.

These are our objectives. We pretty much went over them but we are going to identify one or two stressful up vectors of possible changes impossible stress symptoms you have expressed in the last year. We are going to look at this equation and this is a factual equation that too much stress and change along with an effective stress management will make us sick and can make us sick. That is something to keep in mind. Is it more often than not if we are dealing with stress and we ignore it, or we are not using an effective way to handle stress our body is going to react to that stress by not having a good immune system and we will get sick.

Them are going to talk about a model called the AAAbc model. The where remember this is AAA comes to your rescue, I would like to -- are you to have a practical tech geek and tool to say I am dealing with stress and then broke down to say, what can I handle this, what can I control, what action steps to I need to take with the certain stress.

To fax about this training, and about being human is if you are human, you cannot avoid stress. Number two, most of the time, when we are dealing with the change, even if a change is positive, it can be stressful. Change and stress sometimes are synonymous even if they are good changes, that change in itself adds stress to our life. Let's look at how we can decide what technique to pick for a situation to help us handle our stress.

I just mention some facts about change, change is part of life. Most all changes stressful, even the good kind and it changes what as a spice of life. If our life stayed status quo with nothing ever changed it would be pretty boring. That the change at the excitement. Change in stress can be something related to good things like a getting married, buying a new house or moving. Those three things can also be negative and how you look at those changes effects how you deal with that stress.

I'm going to give you any equation right now that I would like for you to hold onto while we are talking today. Even though we do not have control over all the stresses in our life, we do have control over some things. We do have control over how we feel about our stress or change, how we interpret it and how we cope. I'm going to see that again. When we are dealing with stress, we have control over how we feel, how we interpret that stress and how we cope with it.

An example is that just as a mentioned two different changes that most people life would see as positive, getting married, moving, if it is a movie want to bake -- make, I forgot the third one. Changes that we want to happen are positive. We do have an ability to say, this is a good thing, I am glad this is happening and how we feel about a change interprets how we're going to interpret it and how we are going to cope with its perks

One that can be negative or positive is something like a promotion. If you are really looking forward to the promotion, then how you see it will be positive, how you interpret it will be positive and how would you cope will be positive. However if you are promoted and were quite ready for it or it was unexpected, it could be negative. It is the same promotion that you are getting.

Every year we experience a variety of changes and stressors and like I mentioned some are positive some are negative. We're going to take a look at some life changes and common stresses that we all experience. As we go to these different list of different types of stressors, the good ones that you have gone through in the last year or so and -- or think of someone close to has gone through some of the stresses and think about how you have coped with the change or with the stress.

The first type of changes that we are going to talk about are the customary or anticipated life changes. These are the ones of that we look forward to and anticipate. On the list is it graduating from high school or college, marriage, having children, moving to a new home, changing jobs and retiring. We have control over them for the most part and that we can prepare for them. The high school graduate has a timeline that he or she knows when the graduation will occur. We make a decision to get married, we know when the date will be. Hope we when we change jobs, we make that decision to change careers or companies. We are in charge. However, some of the stressors can also be unexpected, yes. But they we don't get to graduate college wanted to, we wanted children and we weren't able to have children. We wanted to move into a house, a new house, but because of the economy we are not able to do so.

For the most part, these anticipatory changes on the ones that we go through in life and we can prepare for them. That is these kinds of changes. The next kind of changes are the other end of the continuum. These are what I call the shockers of life. They are unexpected life changes that we hope not to have to experience though some, like the sudden death of a loved one we know we are going to lose our loved ones but hopefully we have time for cash to prepare for it. Being involved in accident or any kind of plane accident, any time of accident is not something that we anticipate. In a victim of crime, not something we anticipate. Losing our job, most of the time not something we anticipate.

What makes this difficult is that we do not have time to prepare for them. Losing a loved one suddenly, they calm, they get us, there is no warning. As a result of these changes happening all of a sudden, we are fine 1 min. and the next we will get the news of something terrible happening, we feel out of control.

Those are the unexpected life changes. The search of the change are the normal average day strains of life or even the new annoyances of life, the progressive accumulating stressors. Just like the list says, traffic, losing things, conflict with spouse or partner, errant child conflict, caring for a long-term for a disabled a relative or friend, boredom was career path and also too much pressure on the job and too many changes. Both ends of the continuum. We know that these are going to be stressors that we probably will have to deal with in life and if we don't take the measure to attack the stress that goes along with them, see what we can control, we cannot control the they are going to accumulate and take our toll on us.

We can do with any of the stressors on a short-term basis but it is when they go on and on and we do not have any relief for them that that is where it takes is told. Again, some of these we can control. Traffic, you can come up with different routes or different times to modify your schedule if possible. Losing things, putting things in the same place every sickle day. I tell people a quick story, I always lost my keys. Now my keys are either into situations, if they are at home, they are on my refrigerator -- there in my refrigerator because that reminds me to take my lunch or they are with me in my purse. Used -- two places, that is it. It is easy for me to remember where my keys are.

Conflicts with your spouse, hopefully those are short-term. They go on and on, obviously takes a toll on a marriage. Those are the ones in between what we expect, unexpected and the little annoyances of life. A fourth type of stressor is the personality or personal trait stresses. These are those stressors that are self-imposed but we self-imposed upon ourselves. If you read the bottom of the screen, I will read it for you, says, this is the only source of stress over which we have control. Some of the other ones we have partial control but this one is internal.

You have probably heard the phrase, you may be your own worst enemy. This is a way to think about the self-imposed stressors that we put on ourselves. The stressors may be due to a personality characteristic, they could be out of habit. Some of these stressors you might be able to identify with if you -- these traits may be able to identify with if you are a perfectionist. That puts a lot of expectations on yourself if you expect yourself to do everything or most things in your life perfect.

A piece -- if you have a pessimistic attitude that you look into a situation going what is going to fail, I will not get it right, you could be setting yourself up for failure. Having a lack of confidence, or if you are jealous, walk into situations and work or in your relationship with a high degree of jealousy or feeling that you're not inadequate ash adequate enough that ties in with having a low self-concept.

Had we begin to tackle these? Since they are internal, they are not external. The first up would be to recognize that, wow, this is not a trait that is serving me well. I am to perfectionistic, this is driving me crazy. I do not want to be perfectionistic, I know a good job but it does not have to be 100% correct, 100% of the time. You acknowledge the trait that is causing you trouble. Then, you might want to ask yourself, who do you know in your life at work and home, who do you admire the does not have that trait who is competent, does things Wells -- well but is not dwell on every little detail when it is not needed. I am going to stop here and say that there are some things in life, some jobs in life, some decisions in life that you have to be very, very exact if you are working with getting some medical care and you have a surgeon, you want to search to be as per spice -- precise as possible. You do not want to have him do it is good enough you want them to be very perfectionistic.

For most of us in our day to day life, we can do 60%, 70%, 80% of things as best as we can and 20% of our life we can just get it done good or average. The first step is acknowledging, the second step is, buying someone that you admire that has detected you are trying to [ Indiscernible ] and perhaps [ Indiscernible ] Allison -- person. Let them know that you admire how they are confident, how'd you get confident, how did you develop that? That person is going to be glad to share with you how they learn to be confident. You might find out they're still trying to get more competent.

Or, you can talk to the AP. We're going to talk about what is available to you at the very and that we are your counseling program that is provided free of charge to you and is confidential and is paid for by your company. You can talk to a counselor about how to develop the skills that you would like to develop.

This is the point that I wish we were in a room together but we are not. On your piece of paper, I would like for you to jot down three different changes you have experienced in the last year or so. It can be further back than that. Right down road quickly one change you chose to make. That could be joining a club, going back to school, that is a choice you chose to make.

One change that was out of your control. Perhaps that was losing a loved one or a car accident. And then, one change would like to make or you are in the process of making. I am going to let it to be quiet for just a minute and what you write those down, we will talk about those changes in just a second.

Okay, if we were in the room together I would be looking for your heads coming up, you're not writing anymore, you have got your three changes. Let's talk about the three changes. Of the three changes he wrote down, the one that you chose to me, the one that was out of your control and the one that you want to make, which one was most difficult? Would have little Starbright. Which one was the most desirable? Put a little X by it. Then, which one of the changes caused you or will because in you the most stress? Put a little box by it.

What I'm going to point out at this point, hope you're beginning to see that change and stress, at certain times within our control to manage. As we create changes, and if we are treating those changes and stress along with that change, we have some control to manage that stress. We have to take charge of how we manage our reaction to changes in our life. Again, whether we create them, want to create them or they were out of our control.

Most likely, the one that you found most difficult to deal with was the one that was out of control because you had no time to prepare and it came as a shock to you and that is very normal. I am going to open up the lines at this point. Let's see what questions you have so far.

Any questions?

Florida can we access this presentation online?

As I mentioned at the very beginning, this presentation is being recorded and it will be posted online, you will get an e-mail when it is online.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

.A question but a comment. I think you might might be a little too close to your mouth, we're getting a lot of popping.

I will move it back, thank you. How is that? Is that better?

Yes it is.

I don't have any feedback on this end.

I'm going to go ahead and close the lines again. We talked about the different types of stress. Never going to talk about the symptoms of stress and why we have them. Well, not a surprise, you can see the little picture on the screen, it is of a caveman. A long time ago our ancestors had very different stresses than we do today. They developed this reaction called the flight -- fight or flight response. Either they were going to fight a stressor or flee from it.

That is our body's primitive automatic inborn response that we still have that prepares our body to either fight or flee from a perceived attack, harm or threat to our survival. It helped the early people, the caveman, Indians, etc. to be able to becoming hunts for big carnivorous beast or something like that. They didn't get dragged away by dinosaurs. It allows us to be here today by the way. Of course most of our modern-day stressors don't really require us to fight or flee. Now there may be some situations that we do need to run a way when we are in danger, obviously. Or fight if we need to.

However, our body still responds the same way, as if we are preparing for an attack by a dinosaur. It tells our brains to trigger a chemical, like an adrenaline to prepare our body to run or fight and it is into survival mode that our rational thinking is disengaged, I'm going to see that again. When we are dealing with a stress and we feel threatened or we need to run a way, our rational mind, the part of our brain that says, I can look at this logically and take the steps to deal with the stress is disengaged. Our more primitive parts of our brain take over. That is what is difficult for us to think logically sometimes when we are dealing with stress and we have disk Dr. reaction to it.

This fight or flight response does effect is physically, mentally and emotionally. I'm going to read to some of the symptoms that go with each of these categories and think about when you're dealing with stress, which of the symptoms shows up in you first. We are all prone to one or two or three symptoms that are good to symptoms that our body just a medically reacts to. That piece I do not understand why bite you will hear the listing of, yes, that is me.

Is a great we are talking about stress of change -- you will notice changes in her sleeping pattern, fatigue, headache, dizziness, eggs and pains after like you have the flu or cold coming on but you do not have the flu or cold. Mental responses, lack of concentration, confusion, memory lapses, difficulty making decisions, losing your keys might be a concrete example. If someone asked you where you want to go out for dinner and you have no idea because you cannot make any more decisions as of the stress you are dealing with.

Behavioral, you'll see changes in appetite, eating too much or too little, restlessness, fidgeting, nailbiting, and then increased, sometimes people when they're dealing with stress or change increase their use of drugs or alcohol. I want to stop. Talk about that. I dealing with stress that way, you're actually avoiding it and you may be creating another problem so increasing their use of alcohol or drug or any compulsive behavior during in life in general is not a good thing but especially during times of stress.

Emotional, this can take the form of depression. Tear -- cheerfulness, impatient is, fear, anxiety. I'm sure that we have all expressed my first found about something that was shocking, we might've experienced anger or tears. We also know that about 60 million people suffer from some type of anxiety disorder and that is related to stress. Anxiety disorder can often be related to stress or excessive stress or poor stress management techniques. In general, this is an older statistic, it is probably more right now but as Americans we spent about $60 billion a year on treatment for anxiety.

Think about how you experience stress and which symptoms hit home with you. Those are the symptoms that are telling you, stresses in the room, I need to approach it differently so it does not take over me or control me. What if we ignore our stress in our symptoms? The obvious answer is, it is going to get worse. I just want to take a second to address all of the physical, how it affects our body.

We know that excessive secretions of stress hormones can damage artery linings. When we are under a lot of stress, the quarters so is released for women that excessive cortisol, affects women more than men, put a lot of weight in our midsection. When we are under a lot of stress we are more prone to getting the flu or the cold. Our immune system is not as strong as it could be. Example I always remember from growing up is that I would study and study in college and the minute all of my exams were done, I could guarantee you I was going to get a cold.

This is a list of some of the diseases that you might not recognize that our exasperated by stress and you can read the list yourself but they include the cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, ulcers, headaches and depression. If these diseases are exasperated by stress that it is really important to us to manage our stress to lessen the effects of these diseases or even less than getting these diseases or illnesses altogether.

What are some good ways to manage stress? Again I wish we were in the room together because we would generate a long list. On the list might be exercise, meditation, talking with friends, journaling, prayer, Ike writing, running -- bike riding, running, quiet time, walk into the woods. Those are all great ways to manage stress. Doing pros and cons list. Not every single way that you manage stress is going to help me. Or vice versa. I am a runner. For those of you who are running out there, I am sure you appreciate how much running is a stress reliever that you just zone out. For those of you who can't even think about running and think of running as a stressor, that is not going to work for you.

Not one strategy fits everyone and that one prescription is going to help manage the stress that everybody has. The model that we're going to talk about next, continue choose the way that you deal with stress and we are just going to talk about a rational model to help engage the fact that are part of her brain that is a practical technique that we're going to be talking about for the rest of the training.

Here is the model, it is the AAA. This is AAAbc, decision-making model. The -- we have to be using our rational part of our brain. I'm going to go through each of these in more detail in just a minute but just want to give you an overview of what the letters stand for.

The first ace downs for altar. This is when you are in a stressful situation where there are various variables that can be altered to make the stress lasts stressful and make it more manageable. It is almost April 15. Income tax, doing your income tax would be a good stressor that you could use the altar method for. It is not going to help you get away from paying your taxes but in doing your taxes if you have a plan in place, you have got your documents in order, you're using good time management, and it has an end date which April 15 is the end date, you know it has a beginning and an end. You can use the altar to alter and manage those variables in doing your taxes so the process is a little simpler. That is the A for altar.

Avoid, there are some stressors in life, I hope we would agree on this that we can avoid. We can remove ourselves from. Not every situation that comes our way to we have to take responsibility for him or get engaged in or do anything about. We can choose not to get involved in a situation that is a volatile or stressful. On that comes to mind is if you are working in a work environment where there are a lot of office gossip. You can choose not to be involved with it.

One of the key things for avoiding as we will talk about injustice second is not -- by not getting involved in the stressor and avoiding it, the consequences for not doing so are very low or non-.

Finally the third A is accepting it. If you are dealing with a stressor that you cannot alter, cannot avoid and have to accept that you have to deal with it and they said, you want to be as resilient as you possibly can. You want to have your strength up and you want to look at your perception about that stressor. Again, we are looking from the rational part of our mind not this fight or flee, running away with it. Let's talk a little bit more detail about each of these components.

The key to choosing the proper approach for a situation is the situation at hand of the person involved. It is what you are dealing with, how you react, what you need to solve and the situation you are facing. Here is a little bit more detail on the altar. The first A. In order to use the altar method to deal with the stress, again it has to be time sensitive. It has to be like a work project, taxes or something you are preparing for that you have an end date in mind so you have a goal.

In order to use this skill, the skills that you need to use the altar method is problem solving. You have to be able to problem solve. You have to have direct medication with those involved, you have to use organizational skills, planning skills and of course time management. This is the altar. When you're in a situation, you want to say, how can I alter it? The first thing you want to say is, this stressor has an end date. If it does, the most likely altar will be able to be used.

The second type of stressor is avoid, the technique is of weight. As is said, we're going to remove ourselves from stressor, we're not going to get involved or we are going to minimize our contact with the stressor. In order to do that, we have to say no, no I'm not going to do that, no I'm not going to get involved. If we do not want to handle the stressor we're going to delegated. We have to withdraw from the situation and we have to know our limits. What we need to get involved in doing and when we can say no. That is pulling back.

In order to use this technique, like I said, you have to be willing to remove yourself from the situation or better yet not even get involved in the first place. In order to do so, this technique like I mentioned, there has to be a very low consequence for not doing it or not completing it. If you are asked to become a scout leader this year and you have done it for the last four years, and you really like doing it that you just need a break from it or you have got too much going on, saying no, there is not going to be much consequences to it. You could always say, you will get it for next year.

If you delegate a work project to someone and the need for that to be done properly and it is at a high level profile, this one might not be the best technique. But if it is a project that can be done within the next couple of weeks, and has an average amount of complexity and you can assign it to someone who you know will get it done then you can let go of the task and let them do it. There may be other situations in your life where you can say no, not get involved and there won't be any consequences. Those are the key for using the avoid.

I'm going to open the line right now. We have got one more A to address the before we do that I want to make sure there are no questions. What questions do you have about altering or avoiding a stressor?

I heard a cough, everybody still awake out there, yes? No questions?

No.

Thank you. We are going to go onto the third and four. I am going to close the lines again.

The third A is accept. You looked at the stressor you are dealing with or the change you're dealing with and you said, I cannot avoid it, I have to face it. Perhaps it does not have a candidate so you cannot alter it, you might be able to alter it a little bit but not entirely. Now, you've altered the pieces you can but you also have to accept it. That is going to acquire building our resiliency in changing our perception about the stress. That change in perception goes right back to the beginning of what we start -- first are talking about of how we might our personality traits that either helpless or sometimes harm us when we're dealing with stress, those messages we give to ourselves. We're going to talk about building resiliency first.

Just like if you had to, if you were an actor and you were going to do a performance, you would want to be as prepared and as well emotionally, physically in all aspects of your life to give the best performance. The same thing that we are dealing with stress. You want to take care of those parts of your life that you do have control over so you have got more energy to deal with the stress. That is what resiliency is.

When we're talking about resilience in the first part we're talking about that were physical. We basically as adults know when we are taking good care of ourselves and what areas of our life we need to improve. You can look at your eating habits and see how those are. Are you getting regular physical activity wax the standards have changed. In order to maintain your weight and get good health and benefit from physical exercise, I'm not sure what I'm going to say in American Council on exercise, not sure that that is right, but the -- what I heard is ready minutes of exercise a week but the communicative exercise you like to do.

Regular relaxation. How do you relax? Is that reading a book? Is that going for a walk and mindlessly windowshopping. Is that just meditating, is that prayer, what about a were? You cannot read a book while you're doing your work that you can take some deep breaths and slowdown pace that you are going and your anxiety level or your stress level can temper -- by simply taking deep breaths, in and out of slowing the pace down.

Your use of nicotine, cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, it is well-known that that is not going to help us with dealing with stress. We think it is, but it is what it cause problems that could be long-term and very devastating to our life and the people around us. Sleep, as adults we still need between six and eight hours of sleep. That is still the standard and still has been proven and proven again. Not for me people can survive day in and day out and function while and deal with stress well with less than six hours of sleep.

The last one is regular screenings. People have asked me, why said on their? This is something you can control. I knowing what your cholesterol level is, getting the preventive and test at whatever age you are done, remembering the test that you have to get done, those are things that we can control so we have a better chance of taking care of ourselves versus being shocked because we never got our cholesterol done and wound up with heart disease.

Mentally, while it is important to be strong physically it is just as important if not more important that we have a strong and healthy mind again to make rational decisions and take action plans for the stress and changes we are dealing with. We also have control over our attitudes and our thoughts. What we think, we ask sometimes. Sometimes we are looking to make changes in our lives, we change our action but we sabotage those actions because I was thinking hasn't changed. Were often than not if we can change the way we think about something, then at the action, what we have to do falls in line with that thinking.

Using positive self talk. If you listen to yourself and your lots of I should, I can't, I won't, I don't know how, listen to that talk and try to make it more positive. I can, I will, I am doing it. As best as you can't use a sense of humor. I start my Sunday, I get the Sunday paper, I do not go online, get the Sunday paper, it is my treat the first section I go to is the comics. I have done that and will always do that. I try to instill humor in looking at funny things. I will give you a quick one today. I worked out this morning and as I was leaving the gym, look to my right and there was a car on either side of the doors. It had two bunny ears ready for ease to. I just laughed.

Getting clear about your values, goals and priorities. How does that build is a mentally? If we know what we are looking for in life, we know what is important to us, can stay on track. If we don't know where we are going, we are going nowhere fast. As clear as you think about what is important to you and what are your priorities. Being assertive, learning to ask for what you need and want. Will you always get what you need and want? No. You are being assertive, not aggressive, not passive but this is what is important to me, this is what I need. Obviously that is going to take improved communication skills with anyone at work in your life, anyone you do with.

Finally, taking the time for mental health. I call that centering. It is where you acknowledge when you're off-center and you just need to pull back and take some time for yourself and make it a priority. We can't always do all of these things every day but knowing what they are and putting them in our life can help us to build mental resiliency.

The next category of resiliency is socially. Man was not meant to live a loan. Would like to be around people. We need to build and find relationships that quality to our lives and add value to our life and the richness. Those can be with our spouse, partner, children, friends. Activities that we do in the community. Giving back to the community is a where we built that social resiliency and also deal with stress. You may have lots of stressors in your life but if you are able to give back to others perhaps some of us fortunate or to a cause that is very dear to you, that helps you deal with your stress.

Again, we have to have clear communication to build those relationships. As far as intimacy, in to see me is those relationships were we entrust on with our feelings. It is beyond the chitter chatter and how is the weather, what did you do this weekend. It is really interesting our feelings and that does take time and effort and there is some struggles with that. Hopefully that does add to the richness of your life.

Funnily, spiritually. This can be very private to you, how you connect with a higher power or whoever, higher [ Indiscernible ]. It can be as simple as meditation, does not have to be to a higher power. It can be prayer, worship, faith. It can be a commitment to being the best that you can be. Be true to yourself, that can be a spiritual commitment right there. We need to have that sense of belonging to something bigger than us, for most of us that is important.

That is the resiliency part. We're going to talk Elizabeth about perception. This again goes back to the very beginning of what we started talking about is that changing our perception when we are dealing with a stress that we cannot alter or avoid is the key to accepting and coping and thriving to the change. The key word there was a thriving. You know that you're going to get to the other side of it, not that it is going to overwhelm you and drag you down. These are some ideas of what we're trying to look at our perception. Again that equation, how you feel about it, a stressor or changes going to determine how you interpreted and is going to determine how you cope with it.

What are your expectations of how you're dealing with a stressor or change. If you find about about something today, jigs expect it all to be resolved by tomorrow? Not realistic. Are you having any irrational thoughts? Again not being rational, I should succeeded everything I try. We are human, we are going to fail and that is a reality. Again, go back to looking at how you can build your self-esteem. Be around those people who have good self-esteem, get to be friends with them, watch them, ask if they will be your mentor. Do things in your life that build self-esteem, develop a skill or hobby that you feel proud of that you enjoy doing and it is one of the skills or hobbies that when you are doing it, time just passes so you get, you're in the flow of it.

If we can create a negative attitude being a pessimist we can create a positive attitude and that is the one thing that I always try to remember about when people feel like they are negative is that you learned that, you can unlearn it and be positive. Then, finally, look at a situation in a less provoking way. That may be talking to someone else and getting their ideas at how you can brainstorm of getting out of the woe is me, this is awful to okay, I'm going to do with it. If I do this and this it will be a little bit better. It will take some time.

Let me give you an example that you may have dealt with in your life or maybe a partner or spouse or friend. Let's say you were working a job that you went to Monday through Friday and just every once in a while you have to go on a business trip. Well, there are some budget cuts. The people who are doing more of the traveling, that is not you. Now your boss comes to you and says, we lost so-and-so out of this Department and your job is not going to be about 40% to 50% travel. That means two weeks out of the month you will be on the road. You have a family, children. Immediately your mind my go to, all my gosh, I'm going to be away from my family, friends and all the things that you like to do in telling your routine.

That you think about it and go, what can I gain from this change? The stressor whacks another way might be to look at it that I you will have some new adventures in some towns, meet some new people. You might even get some frequent flyer miles. I would you and your family can go on a trip that you have been wanting to go to but could not afford. You also might be lucky enough that you get a per diem so the cost of living may go down as well and perhaps your spouse, I know this might be a stretch, but maybe they want the opportunity to spend more time with the children and give you a break. I know that one is a stretch, I am hearing the laughter even though we are not on the phone together.

This is the summary of our model. I'm going to open up the lines in just a second. When you're dealing with stress remember the AAA bc for AAA to come out and help you. There can you alter it, can you avoid it? If you cannot alter it or avoid it can you accept it? In order to accept it you have to have a strong resiliency, take care of yourself, do the things to take care of yourselves you can make some good rational decisions and look at your perception of the stressor. I'm going to go ahead and open the lines up for some questions.

What questions might you have at this point?

Now so much a question as a comment. One of the things that I have found that has been held all is to, in given situations, said I really believe, especially when it comes to self-taught, if you are inclined to say, I cannot do that, is to stop and truly ask yourself, do I really believe that?

That is a great one.

Sometimes you find that no, you really do not. It is something you learned when you were longer. Give getting a different active on what your emotional responses and was he truly do believe that about yourself.

Right, breaking down that automatic response of, whatever you say to yourself, to say, no I'm not so sure, stepping outside of yourself, saying is that really true for me? Maybe that was true when you were younger but now it is no longer true and have a chance to change it. Excellent. Thank you.

I have a comment. All the things you mentioned about managing stress, I have seen that in a pie chart or whatever where exercise is one part of the pie and your spiritual life is another part. Your marriage or relationship is another piece of the pie. Your job is another part, you're exercising is another part. To me it was a nice picture to see all those different things and you can make the pieces of the pie bigger or smaller depending how important they are to you and you can also see areas where you need to work on more that you want to work on more but you have all of the areas together in one picture. It was a good picture for me.

Yes, that is a good visual if we look at how -- talking about life balance. If you are spending 12 hours a day at work and it leaves you very little time -- day in, day out. Not just every once in a while. That leaves you little time for your family or friends or relationships or exercise than it takes a toll on us. It is a good exercise to do, just very quickly, what is my pie look like today and keep a check on that. That is a great suggestion.

I have a comment, you said earlier that as your AAAbc change something about yourself, wanting to build your self-esteem, to hang out of socializing get to know people who example of why those characteristics or traits that you want to develop. In the trainings that I have had, I have been told the exact opposite, if you are a positive person, you're hanging out with a bunch of negative people or one negative these ash into positive energy from the group, can you talk to little bit more about that dichotomy?

I guess was trying to say, but see you're working on your self-esteem and you know of someone who emanates having good self-esteem or is positive, I have a good friend named Jerry and she doesn't talk about her. She is one of the truly most positive people I know. I have asked her for tips on how to become self positive peer she took that as a compliment to be a mentor. I am not sure if you asked someone or if they are in your work setting, just to watch them, what they do to stay positive for asked them for tips, how that would be taken wrong, you see them saying? They would take that as a compliment, that is how I meant the statement. Did I miss something?

Well know, I've just been told that other trainings that you should avoid negative people. [ Laughter ]. If you are negative person who is trying to be positive than a positive person might not want to help you become --

Okay. The point is, if you are negative person, and you tell someone, I really have acknowledged that I am more negative, I am more pessimistic than I would like to be, I really would like your advice on how to stay positive forget positive, they will give you that help.

The just have to be up front and ask for it.

Exactly.

[ Indiscernible - low volume ].

Right, ask your intentions and they will take as a compliment, I guarantee you.

There are some closing thoughts on our screen. Just look at those for you. Stress and change are not optional, they're going to come to us every day. It is a condition of living. Stress management is optional. You can have bad stress management techniques or poor ones but you want to choose ones that work for the situation. It does depend upon your attitude and how you approach a situation. I just wanted to make sure that a remember to mention to you about the EAP and the services we offer. We are your EAP consultants. It is a free confidential service to you and you get up to six sessions of counseling her issue free of charge and you can talk tact us at 800-869-0276 number or if you go to the website www.eapconsultants.com, the only password you need to know is interioreap. You put that in any will see lots of great information, there is also stress information on there. You can request services to get a referral to a counselor.

I had a question. I was waitlisted for this class was not able to follow on-screen. Is there anyway I can get your e-mail or someway, somehow the slides?

What we're going to do, this has been recorded. In the next short period of time one of the sessions that we recorded will be online and will be posted and you'll get an e-mail for it.

Okay, so even though I was not officially registered everyone at DOI will get that e-mail?

Exactly.

Thank you.

What was the password again?

interioreap.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Any of the questions before we wind up today? I appreciate you being on the line, I wish you a great day. Happy Good Friday and have a good weekend.

Thank you.

You to.

Take care. Goodbye.