{"id":14895,"date":"2020-04-21T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/?p=14895"},"modified":"2020-04-21T10:35:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T14:35:39","slug":"lately-have-you-felt-distracted-unfocused-sad-angry-overwhelmed-or-confused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/?p=14895","title":{"rendered":"Lately, Have You Felt Distracted, Unfocused, Sad, Angry, Overwhelmed or Confused?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>This is a guest post written by <a href=\"https:\/\/health4u.msu.edu\/people\/jonathon-novello\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (Jonathon Novello)\">Jonathon Novello<\/a>, MSU Health4U consultant and EAP counselor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last\nmonth, mental health providers have seen an increase in clients with anxieties\nrelated to current challenges and uncertainties caused by the worldwide\npandemic. They seek answers to big questions about their health, families,\njobs, finances, and relationships. They describe feeling distracted, unfocused,\nsad, angry, overwhelmed, and confused. Many are feeling something unexpected, a\nfeeling that they may not be able to immediately identify. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That feeling is grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grief is an\nemotion we typically associate with death, but we can feel grief even when we\nhaven\u2019t lost someone close to us. In fact, grief has to do with how we adjust\nto any loss; and right now, we are surrounded by it. Think about the losses\nyou\u2019ve experienced recently and see if they are similar to what other Spartans\nhave endured, such as loss of: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Health<\/li><li>Certainty and predictability<\/li><li>A clear sense of the future<\/li><li>Vacations and other experiences<\/li><li>Time with extended family and\nfriends<\/li><li>Variety and freedom<\/li><li>Comfort, safety and security<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>When humans\nexperience loss we feel grief. Grief is the <em>process<\/em> of moving from <em>resistance<\/em>\nof that loss to <em>acceptance<\/em>. We don\u2019t want to lose stability, time with\nour parents, or the opportunity to watch our daughter\u2019s senior soccer season,\nso our brain resists that loss. We struggle with it and experience a whole\nseries of emotions as we sort out what this loss means to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s the\nthing about grief: there are no short-cuts. Grief is a process that we must\nmove through in order to accept and live with our new reality. The grief\nprocess is often inconvenient, and at times frustratingly slow. While we are\ngrieving, our brains are being taxed with a whole host of complicated feelings,\nfrom anger, to sorrow, to bargaining, to denial. These feelings come and go and\nare not linear. We might feel fine one morning, and then something happens\naround noon and we start to feel angry, and then by dinnertime we are suddenly\nweepy and sad. Or, we may think we\u2019ve left anger and moved onto sorrow, only to\nfeel anger well up again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is very common for people who\nare struggling with grief to have difficulty concentrating, and many find it\nmuch harder to focus on work, other responsibilities, or even pastimes that\nnormally reduce their stress. That is normal and expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have you felt\nlike that at some point in the past several weeks? Maybe you\u2019ve been unfocused\nthis week or more easily distracted. Maybe you\u2019ve been feeling unmoored and\n\u201cblue.\u201d You may have noticed some days your emotions feel like they are right\nunder the surface, ready to burst through if someone says just the wrong thing,\nor you drop one more Zoom call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are all dealing with loss and\nknowing this might help us have compassion for ourselves, as well as\nothers.&nbsp;You are not alone in this. Remember that grief is a process. We know that Spartans Will move\nthrough this, but at our own pace and in our own time. Be patient with\nyourselves and with each other and try not to rush the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Resources to Help You and Your\nFamily<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If you or a family member would like to talk to someone, remember <a href=\"https:\/\/eap.msu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (The Employee Assistance Program)\">The Employee Assistance Program (EAP)<\/a> is a confidential counseling service provided at no cost to MSU faculty, staff, retirees, graduate student employees and their benefit-eligible family members. During this period of physical distancing, EAP counselors are now exclusively offering Telehealth videoconferencing, which is an encrypted platform that is completely confidential and HIPAA compliant. <a href=\"https:\/\/eap.msu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (Learn how to make an appointment)\">Learn how to make an appointment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"https:\/\/health4u.msu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (MSU Health4U)\">MSU Health4U<\/a> has a variety of resources on their website that may be useful, including the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/health4u.msu.edu\/articles\/2020-resource-guide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (Physical and Mental Health Resource Guide)\">Physical and Mental Health Resource Guide<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/health4u.msu.edu\/articles\/2020-now-is-the-time-for-increasing-our-psychological-flexibility\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (Article: Now is the Time for Increasing Our Psychological Flexibility)\">Article: Now is the Time for Increasing Our Psychological Flexibility<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/health4u.msu.edu\/topics\/welcome-to-the-emotional-resilience-video-toolbox\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (The Emotional Resilience Video Toolbox)\">The Emotional Resilience Video Toolbox<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Lastly, MSU employees who are enrolled in an MSU health plan have access to Teladoc, which offers behavioral health (depression, anxiety, grief counseling, addiction, etc.) services via web, phone or app for members and their dependents who are age 18+. <a href=\"https:\/\/hr.msu.edu\/benefits\/healthcare\/teladoc.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (Learn more about Teladoc)\">Learn more about Teladoc<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a guest post written by Jonathon Novello, MSU Health4U consultant and EAP counselor. Over the last month, mental health providers have seen an increase in clients with anxieties related to current challenges and&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/?p=14895\">Continue Reading&#8230;<span> Lately, Have You Felt Distracted, Unfocused, Sad, Angry, Overwhelmed or Confused?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[395,55,396,397,185,104],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb1fcA-3Sf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14899,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895\/revisions\/14899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sourcelive.hr.msu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}