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#49 Microdose Episode: How to Practice P.O.I.S.E. When Things Get Tough in College · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

I'm Dr. Sarah Olivo and I'm Dr. Liz Seidler and you're listening to College is Fine. Everything's fine. Listeners. We're back with another microdose episode. Um, this is another acronym that Sarah and I have put together that I think is really helpful, particularly when times are tough. You kind of hit like a roadblock or you're in a stressful moment and we know that there will be a million of those.Over your college years that using this acronym as a way to take a step back from the situation and hopefully handle it or get through it. The start of handling it in an effective way is poise. So, Sarah, do you want to get us started with that with the P?Yes. All right. So P is press pause. All right. So we know that in stressful situations,Yeah.you mentioned they will come up. A lot of times what happens is we'll notice that either I or you or people we work with or friends. It's like the stressful situation comes up 10 out of 10 people agree.It's stressful. But then the reactions are sort of the layering on that comes with it. Um, is oftentimes adds to the stress or makes the situation worse. So this is a bit of a sort of like a tolerating some distress. You don't make the situation worse piece. And so if you press pause, right, then that just gives you, even if it's just a little bit of distance between how you feel in the situation and what your action might be. So PAll right. The O in poise. Um, once you've kind of paused, the next step is to really increase your awareness to what's going on in your body and your mind. And the things that we really want to pay attention to is noticing what kind of thoughts am I having in this moment? You know, you might be able to kind of catch yourself thinking in a way that might be unhelpful or ineffective.What emotions are coming up for me? And then importantly, what urges am I having? What urges am I noticing that I want to act on that might not be helpful or might be helpful in the situation?Yeah, so, oh, like observe what's going on internally for me, like it's kind of take stock. Observe internal stuff, look at around you and take a sense of the situation. You're in public. Do you want to say something here? Maybe wait, right? So it's just pause and then observe and take note of those things.Then I inhale and exhale. Do this as many times as you need. Yes, this could have been a B. We could have said. Breathe, but P O B S E doesn't spell anything. I also thought that just saying inhale and exhale, I think people hearThey're like, don't tell me to breathe.it just, it's almost sounds like calm down. Yeah.Yeah. They get really reactive and I understand because it's probably been said to them in a really invalidating way. When they're upset, people just sort of assume like, Oh, if you breathe heavily or get told to breathe, like that'll help. And so so many times people have like, if you come in there, like if you tell me to breathe.If that's one of your skills, I'm out of here. And I'm like, all right, um, that said, there's a reason why it does still work when you take in a big inhale and deep exhale and you have those kind of prolonged purposeful breaths, it does something to your nervous system, When you take in a deep purposeful breath and exhale slowly in a deep and purposeful way, your nervous system reacts. It takes stock. It does start to calm the rest of your body down and therefore your mind starts to calm down a bit. So it's even though it might not feel like, Oh yeah, we know how to breathe.It's a really important step just to help slow your nervousYeah. And I think that step is really important because to get to this next step of stretching out your options, you really do need your body to be calmer in order for you to access some areas in your brain that are going to help you problem solve or see things. all your options. It's really difficult to do that if your breath is really dysregulated or you're really overwhelmed in terms of how your body is handling the emotion you're experiencing.So the S in poise is stretching out your options, really trying to examine things from different perspectives, really being open and brainstorming that there might be a lot more solutions to the situation. Then when you first started using the P in the scale,And then last but not least is the E, effective action. So once you are able to do P, O, I, and S, you're much more likely to have actions, responses that are effective in the moment, that kind of help you make better decisions, think about your long term goals and needs in that moment to give you maybe a chance to take some perspective on what the other person might be thinking as opposed to having that reactive reaction, which tends to be kind of coming from a hot headed place.The effective action comes from a more of a level headed or a wise mind place. So, That's our other acronym that we had fun creating, so P O I S E, poise, practice poise during timesSounds great. Thank you to our guests for sharing their stories and their advice. This podcast is for college students and we want input by college students, so please reach out by text, email, or voice memo to CollegesFindPodcast at gmail. com or 929 500 2231. 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