When your health makes you anxious

Some time ago, I posted about anxiety and someone sent me an interesting article*; even though it is some type of publicity, and I don’t do publicity, it was a different dimension of anxiety that I didn’t know: when you have a health problem and you are waiting for a diagnostic.

Many years ago, I had a friend how was diagnosed with cancer, which he beat. He was so happy, he called me from the other side of the world to tell me the good news. And then, he started to have some problems again and I remember his anxiety, waiting for the response from doctors. It was not good news, but maybe the anxiety itself was the worst.

In his very influential book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman talks about his own experience when he was sent for a lab to do a test. Because of his background, he knew it could mean cancer… He analysed about the emotions he felt.

A study of patients in physicians' waiting rooms found that each had an average of three or more questions in mind to ask the physician they were about to see. But when the patients left the physician's office, an average of only one and a half of those questions had been answered. This finding speaks to one of the many ways patients' emotional needs are unmet by today's medicine. Unanswered questions feed uncertainty, fear, catastrophizing.

The focus of Daniel Goleman was about a change in the medical people’s attitude, but I think there are a few things we could do to minimize the anxiety that comes when there is something wrong with our body or mind, but there is no clarity about a diagnosis.

1. The first thing is to keep calm. Easy said than done, but meditation and other practices can help.
2. Stick to the facts, don’t overthink or try to be your own clairvoyant. Just wait and see what happens.
3. Talk to very good POSITIVE friends. They will surround you with their positive aura and that will be healing. I had that experience with a lady, a friend’s sister, while she waited for her diagnosis; about 10 people were there in the room with her sharing nice stories and just giving her good company.
4. Read and feed yourself with positive information. Avoid a reading about your current problem as much as possible.
5. At the day of your diagnosis, act normally. Routine has power in these cases and it will help you to focus your mind on the present.

If you or other people have anxiety before a diagnosis, I hope this may help.

 

* About scanxiety - https://www.asbestos.com/blog/2021/07/29/mesothelioma-scans-scanxiety/

Bringing Emotional Intelligence into life

When the concept of Emotional Intelligence was exposed in a book, many years ago, it was such a novelty that it seemed everybody was speaking about it. But one thing I’ve noticed: very few were working on that.

Many years later, emotions are on the top – just look at the present headlines and you can see emotions. Look at your workplace and check the emotions present there. What about your family?

So, can we work on that emotional intelligence now?

According to Daniel Goleman, it means basicly 4 things:

• To know your own emotions.
• To know how to deal with them.
• To know others’ emotions.
• To know how to deal with them.

It seems easy enough and yet, its impact may change lives. Why? Emotions are a shortcut at times of reaction or decisions, bypassing the need of reasoning and reflecting, and going into the action in hand. By knowing your own or others’ emotions, an individual is able to understand that and help reflection and reasoning to meet the emotions.

For instance, if someone just wants to marry another person he just met one week ago, it will be difficult to talk the person out of it, but using creative techniques like storytelling or even a little role play it is possible to awake the reasoning behind the decision and help the person to think it over.

How do you manage emotions? As any management acting, first you need to know them. Then, you need to have some skills, techniques or a relevant education that enables you to deal with them.

However, good managers don’t simply deal with things, they attain success by using energy in a very effective way, comparing to results. So, it is not only techniques that will help convincing another person to not get married yet, many other things are required, like: empathy, spirituality would be helpful, listening to the other’s point of view, etc. Developing emotional intelligence is a very effective way to live better and help others to live better too.

My message here is simple: dust your favorite Emotional Intelligence book and use all that knowledge into your day-to-day life.