DOSE©

Written by Marion Aufseesser

23 June 2020

Dear Readers,

Once again thank you for joining me.

Covid-19 is creating havoc. We are all reading about anxiety, depression, PTSD and other psychological symptoms.

If you need professional help, do get in touch with your MD first. If you don’t have a GP reach out to a professional helpline, a trained psychologist or psychiatrist.

Remember, a psychologist has full university training and a psychiatrist is a medical doctor, who in many countries is allowed to prescribe medication. Psychologists in most countries are not authorised to prescribe medication. Check your national authorities.

Today I want to introduce you to DOSE ©

As you know from my previous Covid-19 posts, we are ALL experiencing the emotional roller coaster I presented in March (link)

It is now time to provide more useful tools to have in your toolkit to be able to cope with the emotional wave I described. I don’t want anyone to drown!

 Most of you will have experienced the wave gush of emotional flooding since the beginning of the pandemic. The timeline is personal: for some it started in December following the news coming from China, for some it hit home later.

 If you have been personally hit hard by the wave, I extend my thoughts to you. If you have been an onlooker to hard hits, you also get my sympathy of course.

We are ALL in this together in one way or another. So, we all need efficient tools to ride the waves to prevent going under. Positive psychology, meditation and mindfulness, are current buzz words. However, I find that in conveying them, in my opinion, something’s still missing.

 I was lacking some form of understanding, which in my case prevented me from letting go and using mindfulness for example to its full extent. And let’s face, it I don’t always have the patience and time to meditate for 45 minutes per day, which when I was trained was what you were supposed to do!

 Already 15 years ago, I “secretly” modified my practice in how I introduced and taught mindfulness to my candidates looking for jobs.

There was no way was I going to tell candidates, who had recently learned that they had lost their job to spend 45 minutes per day “meditating” when they had bills to pay and a job to find!   

 Based on the book of my acquaintance Loretta Graziano Breuning, “Habits of a Happy Brain” (also available in French), I created DOSE© an easy to remember acronym.

By learning how to use DOSE© you will be able to master positive stress better, use it to advance and you will learn how to understand your negative stress better. This is important as your hyper negative stress is what will get you into the mental lockdown… procrastination, anxiety, fear blocking you from moving forward.

Let’s dive into the emotional roller coaster.

Our brain is designed to cope with life’s ups and downs: it’s an amazing 2kg blackbox which stores all the information it needs to get us through the GOOD and the BAD times.

For many of us right now, it is partially a bad time.

The Covid-19 tsunami has thrown us out of our comfort zones. Some of you have lost everything and loved ones. That is the worst-case scenario and I know it’s happening to millions of people around the world.

Some of you have lost not everything, but a lot. Your job? Your security? That is quite enough to lose in such a short time to lose ones bearing.

Some of you, on the other hand, are on the top of the wave and surfing. For sure, some people are in areas where business is thriving… some in an honest way, some maybe in shadier ways. Human nature…

Where ever you stand, DOSE© will come to your rescue. Because understanding DOSE© will allow you to better fend for yourself. It will, in my opinion, also help you better let go, appreciate positive and Realistic© psychology (my definition) and benefit from the likes of mindfulness, yoga, praying sincerely and other practices.

Just practicing mindfulness, yoga, praying, etc. won’t bring the quick fix results you are looking for. People with years of experience sometimes get there. Right now, we need something more EFFICIENT to alleviate the anxiety, pain, fear and hurt NOW.

Dopamine

Oxytocin

Serotonin

Endorphin

How D-O-S-E helps you survive?

 DOPAMINE:*

Helps you seek rewards and motivates you to get what you need, even when it takes a lot of effort

OXYTOCIN:*  

Helps you build social alliances and motivates you to trust others, (link to trust vs mistrust) to find safety in companionship

SEROTONIN:*

Helps you get respect from others and motivates you to get respect, which expands your mating opportunities and protects your offspring.

ENDORPHIN:*

Helps you ignore physical pain so you can escape from harm when you are injured.

 *In Habits of a Happy Brain (L. Graziano Breuning)

You can’t see your “DOSE”, because these HORMONES are invisible to the eye, but you feel them – they are the ones responsible for your “yes I did it” feeling (dopamine), your hug and smile (Oxytocin) your happiness and confidence (Serotonin) and your boost (Endorphin)

You can learn to react more rationally (system 2) and not on the spur of the moment when they hit you (System 1 = irrationally)

Once you understand which Hormone is pulling you either to positive energy or negative energy (negative stress) you will be able to take the first step to stay calm and make rational (system 2) decisions (see link to cognitive bias article)

Next week I will go further into how you can learn to DOSE© better thus getting a new hold on your life. It’s once again an amazing tool. Using it in conjunction with the other tools from Transitionkit’s toolkit, you will transform your life forever.

We are giving all this away free of charge as part of our modest support to the global community.

Please share, like, comment my articles.

Needless to say we are also open to support your companies and you individually.

For that do get in touch with us (Contact Us)

Wherever you are, stay safe.

Marion