Social Work Profession unit 5

SELF AWARENESS:
Self-awareness includes recognition of our personality, our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and dislikes. Developing self-awareness can help us to recognize when we are stressed or under pressure. It is also often a prerequisite for effective communication and interpersonal relations, as well as for developing empathy for others.
Benefits of Self-awareness
The better you understand yourself, the better you are able to accept or change who you are. Being in the dark about yourself means that you will continue to get caught up in your own internal struggles and allowed outside forces to mould and shape you.

As we move toward the 21st century, the knowledge-based economy demands that we upgrade our knowledge and skills to keep up with the ever-changing society. However, the starting point should be the knowledge of oneself as a unique individual and how one relates to this new economy. The clarity with which you can answer these questions: Who am I? Where have I been? Where am I going? Determine your capability to chart your own destiny and realize your potential.
The importance of self awareness:
It enables you to see yourself as you truly are, for better and for worse.
Being able to manage our behavior is critical to developing constructive relationships and to the quality of life we lead. To do this effectively we need to have a clear understanding of what makes us tick as a person.
However, many of us don't understand ourselves because we often don't know the things we do, say or think and the effect this has on others. When asked we are usually able to tell someone a lot about our parents, our siblings, and even possibly our friends. Yet when it comes to talking about ourselves, we are often unsure and uncomfortable about what to say and feel embarrassed about describing who we are.
There will be many occasions when we will be in a situation that offers us the opportunity to present ourselves in a positive manner that can add value to both the people we are interacting with as well as ourselves. This can be achieved when we have a clear understanding of who we are as well as what we stand for in our everyday transactions.
To be self-aware requires us to obtain feedback from a range of sources to enable us to understand the impact we have on others. This can be obtained by asking members of our family, friends or other associates to tell us how they would describe our behavior when we interact with them.

STRESS:
The word ‘stress’ is defined as "a state of affair involving demand on physical or mental energy". A condition or circumstance (not always adverse), which can disturb the normal physiological and psychological functioning of an individual. In medical parlance `stress` is defined as a perturbation of the body’s homeostasis. This demand on mind-body occurs when it tries to cope with incessant changes in life. A `stress` condition seems `relative` in nature. Extreme stress conditions, psychologists say, are detrimental to human health but in moderation stress is normal and, in many cases, proves useful. Stress, nonetheless, is synonymous with negative conditions. Today, with the rapid diversification of human activity, we come face to face with numerous causes of stress and the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
—Thomas Jefferson

The Dynamics of Stress
In a challenging situation the brain prepares the body for defensive action—the fight or flight response by releasing stress hormones, namely, cortisone and adrenaline. These hormones raise the blood pressure and the body prepares to react to the situation. With a concrete defensive action (fight response) the stress hormones in the blood get used up, entailing reduced stress effects and symptoms of anxiety.

When we fail to counter a stress situation (flight response) the hormones and chemicals remain unreleased in the blood stream for a long period of time. It results in stress related physical symptoms such as tense muscles, unfocused anxiety, dizziness and rapid heartbeats. We all encounter various stressors (causes of stress) in everyday life, which can accumulate, if not released. Subsequently, it compels the mind and body to be in an almost constant alarm-state in preparation to fight or flee. This state of accumulated stress can increase the risk of both acute and chronic psychosomatic illnesses and weaken the immune system.

Stress can cause headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorder, allergies, insomnia, backaches, frequent cold and fatigue to diseases such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, heart ailments and even cancer. In fact, Sanjay Chugh, a leading Indian psychologist, says that 70 per cent to 90 per cent of adults visit primary care physicians for stress-related problems. Just about everybody—men, women, children and even fetuses—suffer from stress. Relationship demands, chronic health problems, pressure at workplaces, traffic snarls, and meeting deadlines, growing-up tensions or a sudden bearish trend in the bourse can trigger stress conditions. People react to it in their own ways. In some people, stress-induced adverse feelings and anxieties tend to persist and intensify. Learning to understand and manage stress can prevent the counter effects of stress.


Methods of coping with stress are aplenty. The most significant or sensible way out is a change in lifestyle. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, various natural and alternative methods, personal growth techniques, visualization and massage are some of the most effective of the known non-invasive stress busters.

Stress Can Be Positive
The words `positive` and `stress` may not often go together. But, there are innumerable instances of athletes rising to the challenge of stress and achieving the unachievable, scientists stressing themselves out over a point to bring into light the most unthinkable secrets of the phenomenal world, and likewise a painter, a composer or a writer producing the best paintings, the most lilting of tunes or the most appealing piece of writing by pushing themselves to the limit. Psychologists second the opinion that some `stress` situations can actually boost our inner potential and can be creatively helpful. Sudha Chandran, an Indian dancer, lost both of her legs in an accident. But, the physical and social inadequacies gave her more impetus to carry on with her dance performances with the help of prosthetic legs rather than deter her spirits.

Experts tell us that stress, in moderate doses, are necessary in our life. Stress responses are one of our body’s best defense systems against outer and inner dangers. In a risky situation (in case of accidents or a sudden attack on life et al), body releases stress hormones that instantly make us more alert and our senses become more focused. The body is also prepared to act with increased strength and speed in a pressure situation. It is supposed to keep us sharp and ready for action.

Research suggests that stress can actually increase our performance. Instead of wilting under stress, one can use it as an impetus to achieve success. Stress can stimulate one’s faculties to delve deep into and discover one`s true potential. Under stress the brain is emotionally and biochemical stimulated to sharpen its performance.

A working class mother in down town California, Erin Brokovich, accomplished an extraordinary feat in the 1990s when she took up a challenge against the giant industrial house Pacific Gas & Electric. The unit was polluting the drinking water of the area with chromium effluents. Once into it, Brockovich had to work under tremendous stress taking on the bigwigs of the society. By her own account, she had to study as many as 120 research articles to find if chromium 6 was carcinogenic. Going from door to door, Erin signed up over 600 plaintiffs, and with attorney Ed Masry went on to receive the largest court settlement, for the town people, ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in the U.S. history—$333 million. It’s an example of an ordinary individual triumphing over insurmountable odds under pressure. If handled positively stress can induce people to discover their inherent talents.
Stress is, perhaps, necessary to occasionally clear cobwebs from our thinking. If approached positively, stress can help us evolve as a person by letting go of unwanted thoughts and principle in our life. Very often, at various crossroads of life, stress may remind you of the transitory nature of your experiences, and may prod you to look for the true happiness of life.

Burnout is a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest. Research indicates general practitioners have the highest proportion of burnout cases (according to a recent Dutch study in Psychological Reports, no less than 40% of these experienced high levels of burnout). Burnout is not a recognized disorder in the DSM.
The well-studied measurement of burnout in the literature is the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Maslach and her colleague Jackson first identified the construct "burnout" in the 1970s, and developed a measure that weighs the effects of emotional exhaustion and reduced sense of personal accomplishment. This indicator has become the standard tool for measuring burnout in research on the syndrome. People who experience all three symptoms have the greatest degrees of burnout, although emotional exhaustion is said to be the hallmark of burnout. Many theories of burnout include negative outcomes related to burnout, including job function (performance, output, etc.); health related outcomes (increases in stress hormones, coronary heart disease, circulatory issues), and mental health problems (depression, etc.).
Although burnout is work-related, most responsibility for burnout currently rests on the individual worker in the United States, as well as the individual company, as it is in a company's best interest to ensure burnout doesn't occur. Other countries, especially in Europe, have included work stress and burnout in occupational health and safety standards, and hold organizations (at least partly) responsible for preventing and treating burnout.
Organizational burnout
Tracy in her study aboard cruise ships describes this as "a general wearing out or alienation from the pressures of work" (Tracy, 2000 p.6) "Understanding burnout to be personal and private is problematic when it functions to disregard the ways burnout is largely an organizational issue caused by long hours, little down time, and continual peer, customer, and superior surveillance"[3] (Tracy, 2000, p.24)
Phases
Psychologists Herbert Freedenberg and Gail North have theorized that the burnout process can be divided the into 12 phases, which are not necessarily followed sequentially:
• A compulsion to prove oneself
• Working harder
• Neglecting one's own needs
• Displacement of conflicts (the person does not realize the root cause of the distress)
• Revision of values (friends or hobbies are completely dismissed)
• Denial of emerging problems (cynicism and aggression become apparent)
• Withdrawal (reducing social contacts to a minimum, becoming walled off; alcohol or other substance abuse may occur)
• Behavioral changes become obvious to others
• Inner emptiness
• Depression
• Burnout syndrome
Coping with burnout
There are a variety of ways that both individuals and organizations can deal with burnout. In his book, Newton (1995) argues that many of the remedies related to burnout are motivated not from an employee's perspective, but from the organization's perspective. Despite that, if there are benefits to coping strategies, then it would follow that both organizations and individuals should attempt to adopt some burnout coping strategies. Below are some of the more common strategies with dealing with burnout.
Organizational aspects
Employee assistance programs (EAP)
Stemming from Mayo's Hawthorne Studies, Employee Assistance Programs were designed to assist employees in dealing with the primary causes of stress. Some programs included counseling and psychological services for employees. There are organizations that still utilize EAPs today, but the popularity has diminished substantially because of the advent of stress management training (SMT).
Stress management training
Stress Management Training (SMT) is employed by many organizations today as a way to get employees to either work through stress or to manage their stress levels; to maintain stress levels below that which might lead to higher instances of burnout.
Stress interventions
Research has been conducted that links certain interventions, such as narrative writing or topic-specific training to reductions in physiological and psychological stress.
Individual aspects
Problem-based coping
On an individual basis, employees can cope with the problems related to burnout and stress by focusing on the causes of their stress. This type of coping has successfully been linked to reductions in individual stress.
Appraisal-based coping
Appraisal-based coping strategies deal with individual interpretations of what is and is not a stress inducing activity. There have been mixed findings related to the effectiveness of appraisal-based coping strategies.
Social support
Social support has been seen as one of the largest predictors toward a reduction in burnout and stress for workers. Creating an organizationally-supportive environment as well as ensuring that employees have supportive work environments do mediate the negative aspects of burnout and stress.
SELF HELP PLANS:
Set short-term, specific, realistic goals. For each specific, concrete problem you've identified, set one or more short term realistic goals you can meet that will help you to know when you've solved that problem. Each goal should be short term, in the sense that it can be accomplished in a short span of time. It should be realistic in the sense that it should be something you can accomplish with a little work.
Make sure that the goals you set are within your own power to accomplish and are not dependent on other people's whims. If you want to find a romantic partner, a useful goal might be to ask someone out on a date; this is something you can accomplish on your own. It would not be useful to set as a goal that the person you ask out will want to date you, or go out with you, because you cannot control these things directly.
If your ultimate goal cannot be accomplished in a single step, then dream up a series of steps that, if accomplished in series, one after another, will ultimately lead to your accomplishing the larger goal. Perhaps you want to get married (but are presently single). It is too difficult to just try to get married all at once. Instead, break this ultimate goal into a series of smaller goals that will move you towards your ultimate goal. Your first step might be to identify a few potential partners you'd like to date. A second step would be to ask these partners out for a date. After a first date has been accomplished with a given potential partner, a third step might be to see if you want to continue dating that potential partner. If you find yourself in an ongoing relationship, a fourth step might be to evaluate whether your partner would make a good long term partner. A fifth step might be to propose marriage. Of course, each of these intermediate steps might need to be broken down into smaller steps themselves. If you get so far as to propose marriage, you will need to first obtain an engagement ring, and then decide how you will propose, etc.
Some examples of what reasonable self-help plans look like will help to make the planning process easier to understand. Feel free to look over these examples and borrow ideas from them for your own planning purposes.
You’ll see in these examples that there are many ways to write a plan. It’s fine to write your plan however you see fit, but do include at least one concrete goal to work towards, a method or methods for reaching that goal, a method for measuring progress towards your goal and a timeline or deadline for meeting the goal.
Always keep in mind that your plan is not sacred and unchanging, but rather something that can and should evolve as your needs evolve. You are in charge, and you are responsible. Let the following examples stir your creativity for writing a plan that will fit you.
Example 1: Managing Suicidal Urges

Jim’s father committed suicide on May 2nd, several years ago. Jim has mild, recurrent depression, but he usually copes well, except in late April through mid-May. He knows, through a therapist he saw at one time when he was suicidal, that it’s fairly common to have suicidal thoughts on or near the anniversary of the suicide of someone with whom you were close. Jim decides in advance this year that he should make a plan for handling this year's risk weeks. Here is Jim’s plan:
Goal 1 - Reduce risk of acting on a suicide impulse
• Method 1 - Empty my medicine cabinet of pills, blades, and other tools I might become tempted to use if I become suicidal. Do this in March.
• Measurement: I will not act on suicidal impulses this Spring.
• Deadline - May 15.

Goal 2 - Keep suicidal thoughts to a minimum
• Method 1 - Divert and distract myself by planning in advance to be with other people as much as possible during April and May.
• Method 2 - self-monitor for thoughts of suicide.
What is the benefit of spirituality and spiritual growth?
Spiritual information should serve to understand our life and our life's tasks better and thereby to achieve our purpose of life more easily. A contact to the spiritual world can be in particularly helpful to sense and confirm one's goals and tasks of life. In addition, this spiritual contact can be a tremendously important guide and assistance in our daily life.
We should realize again that the purpose of our incarnation is to live in the material world, to gain some experiences and to develop some of our qualities further (personal growth ). These experiences are to be made in the material world, therefore it does not make sense and it is even counterproductive to suppress the material world, like already mentioned further above. Our qualities, which are to be developed further, are difficult or even impossible to comprehend with our rational intellect. In most cases these qualities are unconditional love, joy, self-honesty, modesty and humility. This learning process is often called spiritual growth or developing awareness (developing higher consciousness). For this learning process of concepts, which are difficult to grasp by our rational intellect, we can get very important help and assistance from the spiritual world. Therefore it does absolutely make sense to integrate the spiritual world - in other words spirituality - in our daily life.
Spiritual development is a systematic, methodic process that needs to be learnt and practised like any other skill. But very few understand spiritual growth as being systematic or methodic. Most people randomly pick up books and practices without understanding their significance and place in the overall process. Consequently they remain where they are - or they could end up harming themselves. So it is essential that one puts in the effort to learn the knowledge of life and living systematically. The philosophy of Vedanta is useful in this regard. Spiritual practice or yoga has greater significance than what is commonly understood. The term 'yoga' in Sanskrit and 'religion' in English have a common meaning. Yoga is derived from the root yuj, which means to join, unite.
The word 'religion' is derived from the Latin terms re and ligare, which mean to bind back or join back. Thus, religion or yoga is the process by which one unites to the Self, the godhead within. A human being is separated from his true self, atman or godhead by a mass of desires. He needs to slowly overcome his desires and reveal that Self. Human beings are made up of body, mind and intellect. One needs to use this equipment effectively for spiritual evolution. The use of the intellect for gaining spiritual knowledge is Gnana Yoga. Engaging the mind in devotion is Bhakti Yoga.
Karma Yoga refers to the use of physical action for spiritual growth. There is a misconception that one has to choose a single yoga for one's growth. Actually, one needs to perform all three yogas.
The extent of their effect will differ from one individual to another. For example, a person of predominantly active temperament would need to do Karma, the service that will determine his evolution. The proportion of Gnana, Knowledge, Bhakti and Devotion would be smaller in comparison. But he would still need to perform them to ensure an all-round development of his personality. Gnana Yoga is training the intellect to think and contemplate upon the realities of life including understanding the purpose of human existence. Bhakti Yoga is misunderstood to be mechanical performance of rites and ritual. One turns to God anticipating fulfillment of selfish motives. This is not true devotion. Bhakti envisages a much deeper import than what is commonly understood.
Devotion begins with an attitude of gratitude. Oxygen is provided for sustenance. The eyes are able to see and the ears to hear. A mysterious power bestows these and numerous other provisions to sustain us. True Bhakti unfolds with gratitude for these miraculous provisions.
Karma Yoga is action performed with a higher ideal. Purposeful action that transcends mere selfishness that encompasses, the interests of the community, progressive action that renders the mind peaceful and provides the initiative for dynamic action. Performance of the three yogas slowly reduces the desires within. When most of the desires are removed, the mind becomes calm and steady, fit for deeper contemplation. Only such a controlled mind can be directed to meditation. Meditation is therefore for advanced spiritual practitioners, for those who have consistently performed the three yogas with dedicated effort. Only a seeker with a perfectly controlled mind is qualified for meditation that can expose the Self within. Self-realization is our ultimate goal. This state of ultimate bliss, fulfillment and liberation is the culmination of human existence.