Immunity is a concept that is typically used in a medical context to describe how well we can fight off diseases and illness, or how we can remain unaffected by them.
In this article, we introduce the concept of self-immunity in the psychological sense – remaining unaffected by the daily stresses that come our way or being equipped emotionally to handle challenges and difficulties that unexpectedly cross our paths.
One way to build self-immunity is by the concept of Self-Awareness. A key factor in emotional intelligence, self-awareness refers to a person’s knowledge of his or her own personality traits, capabilities, areas for growth and value systems that guide how they behaves in different contexts.
How does self-awareness help one build immunity psychologically? Researchers on the subject say that by gaining more familiarity with ourselves, we can prepare ourselves better for how difficulties will affect us, and plan for ways to combat the negative effects of stress and challenging life situations in advance.
Here below are a few ways that building your own self-awareness can help make you stronger when it comes to difficult life situations:
1. Understand your stressors: stressors are situations, people or things that tend to drain emotional energy from you or cause you distress. Each person is vulnerable to different stressors – a tight work deadline may be the ideal motivator for one employee but may be too much pressure for another in the same team to bear.
Reflecting on how you have responded to different situations will help you understand the kind of stressors you are most vulnerable to, and this will help you know when you need to invest in prepping yourself up in advance when you know you must face one.
Questions to ask yourself are – which were situations where I feel I did not perform to the best of my ability or had regrets about how I handled it? What about the situation made me feel that way? What were things that would have helped me handle it better?
2. Learn how you respond to distress: sometimes, we often recognize that we are upset or overwhelmed only when it is too late and we are severely distressed, or our work is getting affected. Distress can affect us in multiple ways – for example, someone coping with a break-up can be emotionally distressed but can also start falling sick more often because of a lack of physical self-care or a drop in immunity.
Paying attention to how a stressful situation affected you physically and emotionally and learning the unique signs your body and mind send out in such situations will alert you to when you need to take a step back before you get too overwhelmed in each situation.
Questions to ask yourself are: The last time that I was stressed or upset, how did I feel physically? What were some prominent emotions that I can remember feeling? Were there any activities that I engaged in excessively at that time (for instance, extra work, more smoking/drinking, keeping to yourself)? Did the way that I feel about myself change? Did I interact with other people differently?
3. Learn your strengths: each of us has in-built emotional and psychological strengths that can help us weather tough times, if we know how to use these correctly. For example, someone with good people skills can gain support in a tough time by knowing how to express their emotions and difficulties at the right time to the right people.
These are resources that will help you understand how to cope with a situation yourself, or how to access the right kind of support to help you cope in a tough time, such as in the example above.
Questions to ask yourself are: What are things that I am good at? What are difficult situations that I have handled successfully in the past? What helped me handle those situations well? How can I further build on those elements?
4. Build a support system: self-awareness refers to one’s knowledge of ourselves and our abilities, emotions and values. However, our relationships with other people can also influence these factors to a large extent, especially in close relationships. For instance, a close friend’s comfort at the end of a bad day can help remind us of positive aspects of our lives, of strengths we have, or even of things to look forward to.
Gaining awareness on how different people affect us emotionally and intellectually can be a huge guiding factor when we are in situations where we feel helpless or alone and need comfort or advice. Similarly, knowing the people who affect us negatively can also help us gain perspective on who to avoid when we are stressed or upset.
Questions to ask yourself are: The last time I was upset, what did I need most in that situation? Who are people who meet this need (make me feel loved, cared for, happy) when I need it? What do they do that makes me feel this way? Who are people who tend to make me feel upset or confused after I have interacted with them? What do they do that makes me feel this way?
These are a few suggestions on how you can build knowledge of yourself to strengthen the way you respond to difficult situations. If you would like to know more about building self-awareness or self-immunity, you could connect with a counsellor. To do so, click here.
If you would like to discuss this further or need some help or support in this or any other area, our counsellors would be happy to help.
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