How to practice emotional first aid | Guy Winch | TED Talks Vietsub Song Ngữ

I grew up with my identical twin, he was an incredibly loving brother. Now, one thing about being a twin is that it makes you an expert at detecting favoritism if his cookie was even a little bigger than mine. I had questions and I was clearly not starving when I became a psychologist. I began to notice a different kind of favoritism and that is that we value the body much more than the mind. I spent nine years in college getting my PhD in psychology and I can't tell you how many people watch. on my business card and say Oh, a psychologist, so I'm not a real doctor, like I'm saying on my card this favoritism we show the body over the mind.

I see it everywhere. I was recently at a friend's house and his five year old son was getting ready for bed he was standing on a stool by the sink brushing his teeth when he slipped and scratched his leg on the stool when he fell he cried because a minute but then he got up, climbed back on the stool and reached out to grab a box of plasters to put one on his cut. Now this kid could barely tie his shoelaces but he knew that you have to cover a cut so it doesn't get infected and there is They have to take care of their teeth by brushing twice a day, we all know how to maintain our physical health and how to

practice

dental hygiene correctly, we have known it since we were 5 years old, but what do we know about how to maintain our psychological health well, nothing, what do we teach them to our children about

emotional

hygiene, nothing, how we spend.

More time taking care of our teeth than our mind. Why is our physical health so much more important to us than our psychological health? You know, we suffer psychological injuries even more often than physical injuries like failure, rejection, or loneliness. and they can also get worse if we ignore them and can affect our lives dramatically and yet, although there are scientifically proven techniques we could use to treat these types of psychological injuries, it doesn't even occur to us. that we should, oh you're feeling down, just shake it off, it's all in your head, can you imagine saying that to someone with a broken leg, oh just shake it off, it's all in your leg, it's time we close the gap between our physical and our our psychological health, it's time for us to make them more equal, more like twins, speaking of which, my brother is also a psychologist, so he is not a real doctor, we also do not study together, although in fact, the most difficult What I have done in my life is cross the Atlantic to New York City to obtain my doctorate in psychology, we were separated for the

first

time in our lives and the separation was brutal for both of us, but while he remained among family and friends, I I was alone in a new country that We missed each other dearly, but international phone calls were very expensive then and we could only afford to talk five minutes a week when our birthday came around, it was the

first

time we wouldn't be together, we decided to splurge and That week we would talk. for 10 minutes I spent the morning pacing around my room waiting for him to call and waiting and waiting but the phone didn't ring given the time difference I figured he's fine, he's out with friends, he'll call later, there were no cell phones at the time but he didn't and I started to realize that after being away for over 10 months he no longer missed me like I missed him.

I knew he would call me in the morning, but that night was one of the saddest and longest of my life. I woke up the next morning, looked at the phone, and realized he had picked it up while he was out for a walk the day before I got out of bed. I hung up the phone again and it rang a second later and it was my brother and the boy was angry, it was also the saddest and longest night of his life. Now I tried to explain to him what happened, but he said: I don't understand, if you saw that I wasn't calling you, why didn't you answer? the phone and call me he was right, why didn't I call him?

I didn't have an answer then but I do today and it is simple loneliness. Loneliness creates a deep psychological wound that distorts our perceptions and confuses our thinking. We believe that those around us care much less than we are actually afraid to approach them because why prepare yourself for rejection and pain when your heart already hurts more than you can bear? I was in the grip of true loneliness. so, but I was surrounded by people all day, so it never occurred to me, but loneliness is defined purely subjectively, it depends solely on whether you feel

emotional

ly or socially disconnected from those around you and I do.

There's a lot of research on loneliness and all that. it's horrible loneliness will not only make you miserable it will kill you I'm not kidding chronic loneliness increases your chance of premature death by 14 percent 14 percent loneliness causes high blood pressure high cholesterol and even suppresses the functioning of your immune system In fact, scientists have concluded that, taken together, chronic loneliness poses as significant a risk to long-term health and longevity as cigarette smoking. Now cigarette packages come with warnings that say this could kill you, but loneliness won't. This is not the case and that is why it is so important that we prioritize our psychological health that we

practice

emotional hygiene because you cannot treat a psychological wound if you do not even know that you have hurt it.

Loneliness is not the only psychological wound that distorts our perceptions and deceives us. Failure does that too. I once visited a daycare center where I saw three small children playing with identical plastic toys. You had to slide the red button and a cute little dog would come out. A little girl tried to pull the purple button, then push it, and then just lay back and stare at the box with her bottom lip trembling. The boy next to her saw what was happening, then turned to her box and burst into tears without even touching it, while another girl tried everything she could think of until she slipped the red one. button, the cute little dog came out and squealed with joy, so three little children with identical plastic toys but with very different reactions to failure, the first two children were perfectly capable of sliding a red button, the only thing that prevented them from being successful It was that their mind deceived them.

Making them believe they couldn't Now adults are also deceived in this way all the time In fact, we all have a predetermined set of feelings and beliefs that are activated whenever we encounter frustrations and setbacks. Are you aware of how your mind reacts to failure? This is because if your mind tries to convince you that you are incapable of doing something and you believe it, then like those two little boys, you will start to feel helpless and you will stop trying too soon or you won't even try and then you will be even more convinced. that you can't be successful.

You see, this is why so many people function below their true potential, because somewhere along the way, sometimes a single failure convinced them that they couldn't succeed and they believed it once we convinced ourselves of something. It is very difficult to change your mind. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was a teenager and my brother and I were driving with friends on a dark road at night when a police car stopped us. There had been a robbery in the area and they were looking for suspects, the officer approached the car and shone his flashlight on the driver, then on my brother in the front seat and then on me and his eyes widened and he said: where have I seen your face before? and I said in the front seat. but that didn't make any sense to him so now he thought I was high so he takes me out of the car, searches me, takes me to the police car and only when he verified that I have no police record was I able to show him that I had a twin in the seat forward, but even as we walked away you could see from the look on his face that he was convinced I was getting my way on something that it's hard to change your mind once we're convinced, so it might be very natural to feel demoralized. and defeated after failing, but you can't allow yourself to convince yourself that you can't succeed.

You have to fight the feelings of helplessness. You have to gain control over the situation and you have to break this type of negative cycle before it happens. begins our minds and our feelings are not the trustworthy friends we thought they were, they are more like a very grumpy friend who can be totally supportive one minute and really nasty the next. I once worked with this woman who after 20 years of marriage and an extremely ugly divorce she was finally ready for her first date. She had met this guy online and he seemed nice and successful and most importantly, he seemed really interested in her, so she was very excited, bought a new dress and they met at an exclusive place.

New York City bar for drinks 10 minutes into the date, the man stands up and says, I'm not interested and he leaves. Rejection is extremely painful. The woman was so injured that she could not move. All she could do was call a friend and here she is. what the friend said what are you waiting for you have big hips you have nothing interesting to say why a handsome and successful man like that would date a loser like you it's shocking true that a friend can be so cruel but it would be much less shocking if he told you that It wasn't the friend who said that's what the woman said to herself and that's something we all do especially after a rejection we all start to think about all our flaws and all our flaws what we wish we were what we wish we weren't We were, we insulted each other maybe not so harshly but we all do it, it's interesting that we do it because our self-esteem is already hurt, why would we want to go and damage it even more?

No wonder we wouldn't do a physical injury. worse you wouldn't purposely cut your arm and decide oh I know I'm going to take a knife and see how much deeper I can go, but we do it with psychological injuries all the time, why because of emotional problems? hygiene because we do not prioritize our psychological health we know from dozens of studies that when your self-esteem is lower you are more vulnerable to stress and anxiety that failures and rejections hurt more and it takes longer to recover from them so when you are rejected, the first thing you What you should do is revive your self-esteem, not join fight club and beat it to a pulp when you are suffering emotional pain, treat yourself with the same compassion you would expect from a truly good friend, we have to catch our sick. psychological habits and change them and one of the least healthy and most common is called rumination rumination means to ruminate is when your boss yells at you or your teacher makes you feel stupid in class or you have a big fight with a friend and you just can't stop replaying the scene in your head for days, sometimes for weeks, now reflecting on disturbing events in this way can easily become a habit and is very costly because by spending so much time focused and thinking disturbing and negative thoughts, you are actually putting yourself into significant risk of developing clinical depression, alcoholism, eating disorders and even cardiovascular disease, the problem is that the need to reflect can feel very strong and very important, making it a difficult habit to break.

I know this for sure because it's been a little over a year. A long time ago, I developed the habit myself. You see, my twin brother was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma. His cancer was extremely aggressive. He had visible tumors all over his body and had to begin harsh chemotherapy treatment. He couldn't stop thinking. about what he was going through I couldn't stop thinking about how much he was suffering even though he never complained not once he had this incredibly positive attitude his psychological health was incredible I was physically healthy but psychologically I was a mess but I knew what doing studies tells us that even a two-minute distraction is enough to break the need to ruminate at that moment and that is why every time I had a worrying and disturbing negative thought I forced myself to concentrate on something else until the urge passed and eventually a week My whole outlook changed and became more positive and hopeful nine weeks after the chemo started, my brother had a cat scan and I was by his side when he got the results, all the tumors were gone, he still There were three more rounds of chemo left, but we knew he would recover This photo was taken two weeks ago Taking action when you feel alone Changing your responses to failure Protecting your self-esteem Fighting negative thinking Not only will you heal your psychological wounds You will develop emotional resilience You will thrive, you know , a hundred years ago people began practicing personal hygiene and life expectancy rates increased by more than 50% in just a few decades.

I think our quality of life could increase so dramatically if we all started practicing emotional hygiene, can you imagine? what the world would be like if everyone were psychologically healthier if there was less loneliness and less depression ifpeople knew that they had to overcome failure if they felt better about themselves and more empowered if they were happier and more fulfilled I can because that is the world I want to live in and that is the world in which my brother also wants to live and if you inform yourself and you change some simple habits, that's the world we can all live in, thank you very much.