Use Your Brain's Natural Style to Handle Stress

by Dr. Yvonne Eve Walus

If you’ve ever wondered why the how-to-avoid-stress articles don’t apply to you, then chances are it’s because your working style is different to that of the advisers.

Barbara Prashnig, the director of Creative Learning Systems in New Zealand and a world expert in the area, defines working style as the way in which people absorb, process and retain new and difficult information; together with the preferred environment in which they think, concentrate, do their daily work and solve problems.

Your working style will consist of a combination of the following biological elements:

• information processing (left-hemisphere or right-hemisphere or integrated);

• decision-making (impulsive or reflective);

• sensory preference for information intake (auditory - through your ears, visual, tactile - through your hands, kinesthetic - by moving your whole body and action);

• physical needs (need for mobility, need for intake, preferred time of day);

• environment needs (either silence or background noise, light intensity, temperature, structured or informal work area);

as well as of a combination of the following learned elements:

• social (working alone, in a pair, with peers, in a team, with a supervisor);

• attitudes (level of motivation, persistence, conformity, responsibility, need for structure, need for variety).

Sometimes you may not even be aware of the fact that background noise bothers you until you encounter a particularly tough problem and discover, to your amazement, that you cannot concentrate in your usual open-plan office. Or the bright fluorescent lights start driving you up the wall. And then, of course, you feel stressed, and guilty about feeling stressed, and stressed because you’re feeling guilty.

But it’s not only that an unfulfilled working style can lead to stress. The way we handle stressful situations also depends our working styles.

Strong analytics (left brain processors), for example, become focused and withdrawn when under stress. They appear temporarily unaware of everything else and refuse to discuss the problem until they’ve solved it. Strong holistics (right brain processors), on the other hand, become emotionally involved with the problem and need to discuss it with friends and colleagues. Whether the discussions yield a solution or not, they will feel better for having been heard.

If you are a left-brain person dealing with a right-brain person under stress, remember to listen without interrupting or offering solutions and to validate their feelings. If you’re a right-brainer trying to help a stressed-out left-brainer, make them feel trusted and appreciated.

Having a better understanding of ourselves and how our brain works, will lead to a more fulfilling, less stressed-out lifestyle. So next time you walk into a room and have a sudden irresistible urge to switch on the light or turn off the music, listen to your brain. It’s telling you how to avoid stress.

References:

“The Power of Diversity”, B. Prashnig, published by David Bateman, 2000.

Check out the Web page at www.creativelearningcentre.com