There are a number of articles published on the effects of stress and burnout in nursing. If you haven’t read any of these articles, you’ve probably had your own experience with stress, if not in your workplace, then in your life. How do we deal with stress?
MEDITATION TIP OF THE WEEK ...IS A SERIES OF SHORT, EASY TO REMEMBER, AND BASIC TIPS ON HOW TO MEDITATE. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, IS IT HELPFUL? When Meditating, Understand Thoughts to be Like Clouds Minding one's life mindfully, aware, and compassionately comes from realizing the changing nature of our thoughts. We do this by turning the mind inward, transforming the stormy arisings of thoughts, emotions, and feelings by recognizing them to be impermanent phenomena like passing clouds in the sky. Minding one's life mindfully comes from realizing that whatever thoughts and emotions may be stirred up [...]
Compassion Doesn't Have to Hurt, in Nursing or Otherwise Albert Einstein wrote: A human being is a part of the whole called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, his feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and [...]
Use Meditation in Everyday Life When we think about meditation or mindfulness, it's easy to get caught-up in the belief that we need to be sitting on a cushion, cross-legged, or located within a monastery to practice meditation. While these aspects of meditation can provide us with the support necessary to achieve a stable meditation practice, and while a formal meditation practice is the only way to become familiar with our mind, the primary reason to meditate, especially within the context of caring for another, is to become familiar with our true nature within our ordinary daily life. In fact, [...]
COMPASSION ISN'T OUTSIDE OF YOU Compassion isn't something foreign to our minds and our hearts. It isn't something "out there" that we have to get or acquire. And, it isn't something that we need to learn (although we may need to remember it at times). Granted, there are times when we feel that to find even the smallest compassionate impulse for certain patients requires of us the most Herculean effort. There are also times when, either due to the amount of stress that we're experiencing, or the number of patients we're dealing with, it doesn't feel like there's "...enough to go [...]
In the second part of this series, Why Do You Get Stressed..., we looked at why we become stressed due to our thoughts and thinking. In this final part, we’ll explore how mindfulness and meditation can help us to work differently with our mind and emotions.
In the first part of this series, Is Nursing All About Stress?, we looked at the definitions of stress, stressor, emotions and feelings. We also looked at some of the statistics on the causes of stress in nursing, the negative effects on the body and mind and how emotional and mental reactivity to stressors and stress can perpetuate the stress that we experience. In the second part of the series, we’ll look at why we become stressed and begin to explore ways to stop our habit of “stressing out."
As nurses, we know the meaning of stress. In fact, we may know its meaning more intimately than most of our peers who work in other professions. This is partially because we’ve seen the devastating effects that chronic stress has on the bodies of our patients. It’s also because nursing is reported to be one of the most stressful professions. Why is it that when we enter into discussions on how to decrease stress in nursing, we usually point to changing things external to ourselves and that when we try to change how we deal with stress, we usually end up stressing out about that too?
How comfortable are you with pain? Does it depend on whether it’s your own pain or someone else’s? Would you like to find comfort in pain…or at least in pain management? For many of us, pain is something to be avoided, whether it’s our own pain or the pain of another. When confronted with this most daunting physical experience, we’d rather turn and run…or at least walk quickly, in the other direction.
Don't have time for a meditation class? There may be a solution for you! What if you could take a class just once, and with practice, attain a degree of meditative skill that would positively benefit you?