Prof.Dr.Aung Tun Thet Based on “Anxiety Is Contagious.

Here’s How to
5/14/2020 Contain It.”by Judson Brewer
HBP Corporate Learning, March 18, 2020
 • Uncertainty
• How contagious and deadly
• Travel
• Economy
• Jobs
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 • Adding fuel to anxious fires
• Uncertainty triggers fear centers in brains
• Knowing how process work
• Take proper countermeasures
• Develop better mental hygiene

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FEAR

• Basic human mechanism

• Survival
• Practice behaviorus to avoid danger in the future
• Successfully avoid danger feel rewarded

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3-STEP MENTAL PROCESS

• See saber-toothed tiger (trigger)

• Run away (behaviour)
• Live to tell our kids to avoid that
part of savanna (reward)

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FEAR

• Help us survive
• Fear + Uncertainty = Anxiety
• Bad for mental health
• Anxiety spread by social contagion — spread of
affect from one person to another — lead to panic
• Fear and anxiety spread easily from one person to
another
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SOCIAL MEDIA

• Don’t need to be physical contact to catch “emotional

infection”
• Scrolling through latest news on phone or desktop like
walking by people who sneezing fear
• More you read more you take on worry and spread it

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EMOTIONS

• Keep us from being able to think straight

• When overdone longer protect us from dangers
• Become danger

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MINDFULNESS

• Combat this
• Really effective
• Process and outcomes of training

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MINDFULNESS

• Meditation called “loving kindness”

• Awakening and fostering inherent capacity for
kindness and connection
• Decrease activity in brain regions that get fired up
when people anxious

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• 1) ‘Run a code’
• Resuscitating someone who’s heart just stopped — first
stop and take own pulse
• Pause and take deep breath (or three) before
proceeding
• Stay connected to yourself in present moment
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RECOMMENDATIONS

• 2) Get in touch with your “calm”

• Calm feel better than anxiety
• Spread natural immunity
• Step back
• We are all in this together!
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RECOMMENDATIONS

• 3) Take one day at a time

• Brains hardwired to plan for the future
• Don’t have information right now about COVID 19 in
next 6 months

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• If/when brain spin out into future thinking and worry

• Take mindful pause
• Take it one day at a time
• Do what needs to get done today
• Take care of tomorrow when it comes: tomorrow
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RECOMMENDATIONS

• Information: closer to now more clearly able to think

• What do I need to do this hour?
• Take on the day hour by hour, minute by minute,
and even moment by moment

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UNCERTAINTY

• Spread social contagion

• Viral vector of anxiety

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MINDFULNESS

• Stay mentally connected

• Spread calm instead of germs
• Calm your mind
• Stay present
• Move forward
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