Spirituality

Building the Psychological Immunity

A lot has been spoken about the physical strength and immunity of the body, especially during the pandemic. Apart from the death toll, COVID has brought many severe psychological issues like fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and depression. These symptoms are observed in both – Covid patients as well as within Covid warriors.

Never before, people were talking about immunity. Not only a physical immunity but also the psychological immunity to cope with all that negativity, stress, and uncertainty lurking around everyone.

What is psychological immunity?

Psychological immunity is defined as “A system of adaptive resources and positive personality characteristics that acts as psychological antibodies at the time of stress.” Like physical immunity, psychological immunity also possesses antibodies. Personal resilience, character, and adaptive capability are called psychological antibodies, yielding protection against stress, emotional drainage, and traumatic events.

How is it measured?

Many factors like problem-solving, ability to seek social support, avoidance are considered while measuring psychological immunity. Scientific scales like emotional quotient, Stress overload scale are also taken into account when it comes to psychological immunity.

Characters and personal traits like positive thinking, sense of coherence and control, emotional control, and goal orientation help build a resilient mind, pointing towards high psychological immunity. These factors play a significant role in the overall happiness index of an individual.

Almost everyone has to undergo highly depressing incidents such as the death of a loved one, career failure, financial loss, or family issues. How we bounce back from it entirely depends upon our emotional resilience.

Being in the age of social media, where everything is out there in public, it’s challenging to put your genuine opinions and feelings out there without fearing the backlash. The courage to be yourself, despite external influence, is a significant part of psychological immunity.

Recognizing, being authentic, and expressing your genuine emotions without fear or denial  

What can we do to improve our psychological immunity

Change the way you think. Instead of thinking, I will never be able to do that, you can think, if I put all my efforts into it, it will improve my chances of success.

Setting up short and long-term goals helps in being committed. Splitting the main goal into small plans will help you crush the goal and keep you committed.

Pick something which is a little bit outside of your comfort boundaries and take one step at a time. Pushing yourself every day to do one thing that puts you out of your comfort zone will help you improve yourself.

Increase your level of tolerance for discomfort, keeping the bigger picture in mind. May it be that painful last lap in the swimming pool, or may it be giving up on binge-watching your favorite tv series to study for the interview, when you sacrifice your comfort, it always yields positive results.

Falling prey to our emotions like being anxious, vengeful, or excited pushes us to make emotional decisions. Being 100 percent logical makes you nothing but a robot. Creating a perfect balance between logic and emotions helps us make better decisions during a crisis and enjoy life to the fullest.

Finding the explanation instead of justifying the failure can teach you a thing or two. If you keep on playing the blame game, you will never improve yourself.    

Meditation:

Meditation makes you realize that your inner world is more important than the external world. It strengthens the attention span of the meditation practitioner. When you connect yourself with the inner self, you realize that the troubles you are facing now are just like turbulence passing by, and eventually, it will be ending.

Not just to find a refuge within, but meditation has some physiological effects which result in the secretion of hormones like serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. These hormones are directly responsible for uplifting your mood, being positive, and strengthening your self-confidence. Practicing meditation leads to a solid and resilient mind, helping you improve your psychological immunity.

What is the epitome of psychological immunity? Lord Krishna has answered Bhagvat Geeta. He says Sthitaprajna is the one who has ultimate psychological immunity. Sthitaprajna means being content. One who is free from desires and wholly fixed on the Atman, or the supreme soul. Lord says,

दु:खेष्वनुद्विग्नमना: सुखेषु विगतस्पृह: | वीतरागभयक्रोध: स्थितधीर्मुनिरुच्यते ||

The natural sage of steady wisdom is the one whose mind remains undisturbed, even in misery, who does not get distracted by the pleasures, is free from all the attachments, fear, and anger. Such an individual possesses the highest amount of mental resilience, and the first step for that begins with meditation.

We hope this blog helped you understand the vital importance of psychological immunity. If you have any questions regarding how to improve your psychological immunity, please write to us at info@chamundaswamiji.com.