Strategies for Psychosocial Health and Wellbeing at Work and in Life
The “Strategies for Psychosocial Health and Wellbeing at Work and in Life’ is an online course that provides a foundation and framework for assisting Team Members to understand and care for their mental and emotional wellbeing in the context of working at home, remotely and/or at a workplace.
Everyone needs a mental health toolkit that can be used whenever you are struggling with emotional issues.
Emotional Crutches
A Psychosocial crutch is something we use to help us get through our darkest hours. It can be a substance, an object or an individual providing temporary comfort when you are in turmoil. Emotional crutches make us feel safe and only safe when it is present.
Not all psychological crutches are bad. When you have a broken leg, you use a crutch to keep yourself mobile, in the same way a psychological/emotional crutch can help you when you need it. We all have different types of emotional crutches that we use when we want to distract ourselves from painful vulnerabilities. For example, it may be as simple as having a Netflix marathon.
According to Jeremy E. Sherman Ph.D., MPP “In the past 50 years scientists have discovered that we all have receptors for many of the mind-altering drugs, and internal equivalents for them too, for example, endorphin, the body’s natural equivalent to morphine. A runner’s high, or the little tingle we feel after eating spicy food is really the equivalent of a minor morphine buzz. Apparently, we’re all equipped with evolved natural painkillers—psychosocial crutches like endorphin to get us through”.
We become concerned though when an emotional crutch becomes harmful to us for example, substance abuse, shopaholics that put in financial difficulty or staying with a person that abuses us because we can’t live without them.
An emotional crutch that is unsustainable is a bad crutch. Think, what if the crutch disappears, will it ruin me? If it takes you down the wrong path in life such as drug addicts turning to crime or shopaholics turn to debt and poverty then it is an unsustainable emotional crutch.
In our course Strategies for Health & Wellbeing in Work and Life we talk about how you can develop good practices to help you become an Emotional Warrior.
Knowledge Workers Are Not a Production Line
Most workplaces today are not a production line. But many Managers will manage their people as if they are. In the past, 50-plus years ago, when people worked in most jobs they were told what to do and how to do it. Today, most jobs are complex, and they need the person to be mentally and emotionally fit and skilled.
But work today is done in a complex social structure – not a production line.
Therefore, people need better self-management and interpersonal skills.
If you are not training your people to be improving their mental and emotional skills, you are supporting and tolerating an underperforming workforce.
You can’t say, “We didn’t have to do it in the past” That is ridiculous – it is like saying “I want dial-up, when we have broadband!!”
The place to start is having all workers complete an online course… Strategies for Psychosocial Health and Wellbeing at Work and in Life
What you will gain from this course:
Recognise common responses to uncertainty, stress, isolation, and loss of connection
Identify signs when we might be struggling with work in the virtual world
Adopt techniques to enable productive remote working while maintaining wellbeing
Explore and utilise a range of support options
Apply psychosocial strategies to successfully care for yourself and others