Mental wellbeing during social distancing

Hi, my name is Amin Azam. I'm a psychiatrist uh by training and at heart, a passionate educator.

I work at three San Francisco Bay Area Health Science Universities and also at osmosis. Today, I'd like to talk to you about maximizing mental wellbeing during social distancing.

I've got four key tips. Number one, we're social creatures because we're mammals, by definition, mammals crave social bonding and physical contact.

That is as opposed to say, for example, reptiles. So let's not fight our natural instincts at the same time, we are humans.

So we have human intelligence as well as being mammals. So we can do the mammalian socializing thing while also leveraging our human intelligence.

Number two, maximize collaboration while minimizing physical contact, historical workplace collaborations have occurred around cubicles, desks, conference rooms.

But if you think about it, we invented the phone, fax, email, cell phone, texting, tweeting. And now slacking, all of those technologies allow us to collaborate at a distance without actually being in physical close proximity to each other.

So we can still maximize collaboration. Also, I'd like to add video conferencing has become sufficiently high fidelity now to approximate in person experiences.

So the audio and video are less choppy or delayed than they once were assuming. Of course, that you have sufficiently high bandwidth capacity.

So when you turn on your video and video conferencing, it allows for all of that nonverbal communication to be communicated.

So you hear the tone and a voice, you see the facial expressions of the other people you're communicating or collaborating with.

And that maximizes social connectedness even if we're not in the physical same space. Number three, be attuned to your personal physical manifestations of stress.

OK. So for me personally, uh I know that all my stress goes to my lower back.

I get a lot of low back pain when I'm under a lot of stress. So ask yourself how and where does stress manifest in my body?

And then what do, what, what can I do to mitigate that? So for me personally, I'm gonna be doing a lot of stretching to stretch out those lower muscles in my back.

I'm gonna be doing sit ups to strengthen my stomach muscles. So that way uh I can offset the stress in the muscles in my back.

You might even try setting an alarm as a regularly regular event in your life where you say every time that alarm goes off, I'm gonna think about stress in my body and what do I do to offset the stress?

So for me personally, one of my offsetting stress things is walking in nature. Now, I'm in the San Francisco Bay area.

I can no longer do that because as of today, Wednesday, March 18th, we remain a shelter in place region of the world, but I can do next best things.

So I'm looking out at the trees right outside my window in my home right now and that helps. It's not the same, but that helps.

I can step outside my front door and feel the natural air. I can feel the strength of the warmth of the sun on my face.

Those aren't perfect and they're not awesome, but they're gonna help all the same. So think about ways that you can find your stress relievers while still maintaining social distance.

Number four, express love and caring through words, not touch. So a few weeks ago, high fives, air, high fives and fist bumps uh were were thought to be crazy.

And now we are asked at least in the San Francisco Bay area to maintain at least 6 ft of distance from other people. So the situation is changing rapidly, despite how rapidly it's changing.

We also have mechanisms for how we can communicate at a distance. So remember that speaking uh does not transmit the virus, our voices carry beyond 6 ft distance.

And in fact, my voice is being transmitted globally around the world. Thanks to the technology.

So let us make sure that we transmit uh care and affection faster than the virus can transmit around the world. Lastly, I'd like to say that talking about feelings makes them realer.

Intrinsically, feelings are an internally felt experience. Now, we have external manifestations of that when we cry or facial expressions, but the more that we can declare and say what our feelings are the realer they are for other people.

And when we bravely share like that, we are following our mammalian instincts. OK.

So as a quick recap, remember during social distancing, it's important to tend to both your own mental health and the wellbeing of others.

One, we're mammals. So we need social contact.

Two, maximize collaboration while minimizing physical contact. Three, be attuned to your personal physical manifestations of stress.

And number four express love and caring through words, not touch. If we all bond together, we will get through this global pandemic stronger.

I hope that was helpful. If you don't have the resources you need at your school or if you have questions, please reach out to us at partnerships at osmosis.org.