I have been receiving emails from a wide range of organizations and individuals alarmed at the despair that is characterizing their workplaces, neighborhoods, and in some cases their families. The state of our world, our country, our communities, and even our families reflect the social and economic tensions that have rippled in and out of so many groups. It is a time to highlight the need for the attention management that can help bring much-needed balance to decreasing reactivity. Our brain’s “smoke detector”, the amygdala, is oriented to our protection. It searches for perceived threat, often to the neglect of a focus on what is neutral or even positive in our lives. Attention management is a powerful skill that can help each of us during these turbulent times by reminding us that we have some choices about where we put our attention that can help us stay in balance when things seem out of control.
Several steps are involved in attention management: first, you have to notice where your attention is focused. Is that focus helping you make good choices? Stay physically and emotionally in balance? Go through the days in a way that accesses your strengths and shrinks your “rough spots”? Or, is your attention more often focused on deficits of one kind or another? The good news is that you can take charge of where your attention goes. The first step is to be tuned in to your attention. Then, you can decide if where it is going is helpful or not. Remember, your amydala’s default is to focus on the negative. When your attention is stuck in negativity you can shift it to something neutral or even positive that is also true.
In the Social Resilience Model (SRM) our skill of “Tracking” is a skill to use to notice where your attention is going and what that does in your body (has your breathing gotten shallower? Is there muscle tension? Is your heart pounding? etc.). Then, if what you notice is an increased stress response…hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal..it is time to shift your attention. You can do that by noticing a place in your body that is less stressed, or you can direct your attention to something around you or in your life that brings a sense of relief, peace, or gratitude. Attention management is our super power. It can bring balance and engage our natural capacity for resilience.
And, speaking of resilience…my colleague,Brigid McCaw, and I have had our article calling for an orientation to Resilience and Trauma Informed Care (RTIC) to replace the current term, Trauma Informed Care, that has characterized so many agencies and organizations and resulted in a tendency to overlook strengths. We all have the capacity for resilience. It is long overdue that we build this resilience orientation into our workplaces, communities, and lives. The article is in the Articles section of the website.
