A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one thing is offered. Because a person may refuse to accept what is offered, the two options are taking it or taking nothing. In other words, one may "take it or leave it".

The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all.

As dispatchers you are working long hard shifts during a time when people in the world are more stressed and have increased mental health issues.  Furthermore, you are so short staffed that someone was ordered back from another part of the organization and some dispatchers have quit.  The rest of you may feel like you have no choices.  It's either 'take this stressful job and just do it, or leave'.  And leaving might not be an option for you because there are not a lot of other jobs out there during Covid that pay as well or are as stable and you may need this job to pay your mortgage and look after your family.  

And everyone....EVERYONE.....likes to have a sense of agency, or power and control, over their own lives.

So my goal in writing this blog post, at the request of Suzanne and the Chief, is to help you to maintain good mental health while you get through this extremely stressful time and give you specific strategies related to your situation that might be helpful for you.  Specifically, I'm thinking that you sit and look at your computers a lot and probably move into an adrenalized state several times throughout your shifts and that shift work might interfere with your sleep rhythms.  
 

So when we face anything the brain perceives as a threat, stress is the body's natural response.  Identical twin sisters Drs. Amelia and Emily Nagoski identify the difference between stress and stressors in their book, "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle." They write:

They provide 6 evidence-based strategies for completing our body's stress cycle:

• Physical activity. It's not just about going to the gym. Dancing counts. Jumping jacks in the dispatch room are fine. Running on the spot, stomping your feet or screaming, all of these work. The point is you have to use your body. Since stress is physical, physical activity is a big part of ending stress cycles.
• Creativity. Make something. Do you like to knit, sketch, sing, write, or scrapbook cards? Whatever creative endeavor speaks to you, do it.  We have a tendency as humans towards a negativity bias. It's important not to beat yourself up when you notice this, however, the more intentional you can be both as an individual and as a group towards positivity then it will help all of you to manage the stress you are under better.  We 'co-regulate' with other people's nervous systems that we are around.  The more each of you works towards an intentionally constructive way of dealing with this stress that you are under, the more it moves the group culture in a positive, solution-focused direction and everyone benefits.
• Laughing. Especially when you can laugh together with someone, laughter is a way to release and express all the emotions we’re keeping inside. Emotions are like tunnels. If you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end. Laughter helps with this, as does recalling a funny story that made you laugh.  Make it a 'thing' to look up TikToks and videos that will bring pleasure and a smile to each other's faces!  
• Crying. Crying is for everybody. Babies cry because it’s good for them, but it’s good for adults. Crying is one of our body’s mechanisms to release stress. It’s important not to be so embarrassed by our tears that we attempt to stop them from coming out.  I know that this is not necessarily a strategy for when you are at work, however, taking time to journal or get support from a loved one by letting your tears out releases the stress from your nervous system and allows you to move into a calmer state.  
• Physical affection. You don’t have to have a romantic partner, just someone you feel safe with to give you a long, strong hug (about 20 seconds according to the research) or time with a loving pet. Physical affection helps your body release trust and bonding hormones like oxytocin, and those can chase away the sense of danger your body was previously holding onto as a result of the calls you process on the job. As our hormones shift, our heart rate slows and our body has the opportunity to feel safe.
• Deep breathing. Breathing deeply allows your body to know that you are safe because we move into shallow breathing when our nervous system is in 'fight or flight'.  If you take deep breaths while lying on the floor with your legs up the wall it can really help you to move into the parasympathetic nervous system because the blood coming down your legs and filling up your heart muscle will also signal to your brain to relax.   Just a few minutes of this practice can calm down your vagus nerve and complete your fight-or-flight stress response.

So the vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve and is the nerve related to accessing your parasympathetic nervous system.  

This video by Sukie Baxter explains Polyvagal Theory and shows some very simple exercises to massage the vagus nerve so you can relax your nervous system out of the stimulation response.  This will help you to not feeling anxious all of the time.  

And you don't need to watch the video or understand the theory to get the benefit.  Just recognize that the exercises are simple and can be done easily in the dispatch office.

https://youtu.be/L1HCG3BGK8I



I also really enjoyed Andrew Byrne's descriptions about how to stimulate the vagus nerve with some very simple exercises.  He put it out for people who want to sing better but I think it will work well for you guys too......especially if you want to sing better!!!  Again, the exercises are really simple and don't take much time or space so they will work in your call center when you are not on the phones.  

My colleague, Lindsay Gulanes, is a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.  She explained to me that when in sympathetic arousal in our nervous systems, our bodies recruit energy from our core to our arms and legs.  Doing these exercises will help to dissapate that energy and down regulate the nervous system.  Her suggestions were:

1. Stand up and shake your arms and legs, or stamp your feet, and/or do squats,  burpies or planks for 3 mins.  That will dissipate some of the energy that may have built up during your calls.

2. You can cross your arms and put them on the opposite shoulders and then gently bring your hands down the outside of your arms in order to soothe and release the 'excited' energy in your body. 

3. Chew gum, sing or hum to strengthen the ventral part of the vagus nerve.  The vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic parts of our nervous system and governs our organ function.  

If you would like to learn more about Polyvagal Theory for managing stress- Sukie Baxter explains this simply in her video here:  https://youtu.be/OeokFxnhGQo   Or if you want to research Polyvagal Theory some more then you might want to read books/listen to videos by  Dr Stephen Porges, who developed it, Steven Levine or Twig Wheeler. 

Elie Wiesel may have some things to teach us about these kinds of 'Hobson's Choice' circumstances too.  Elie Wiesel is an American-Jewish author and one of the most famous Holocaust survivors.  In 1986, Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for overcoming the horrible experiences at Auschwitz and for sending a message of peace and human dignity. He is also a founding member of the New York Human Rights Foundation.

Several quotes from Elie speak to how you can maintain resilience as a team until they have enough dispatchers for you to go back to your regular schedules.  Some of his quotes that you may want to adopt as a team are:


"When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude."

"If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am."

"Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another."

"Peace  is our gift to each other."

As a team only you guys can decide what the culture is that you want to adopt.  It will uniquely represent the personalities of all of you combined.  I just want it to be your 'happy place' even under these stressful circumstances.  If you have ideas about how management can support you then speak up.  Don't focus on the part that you don't have control of, it won't help.  Management doesn't have control of this either.   Focus on what will make it better.  

This blog post is already long so I will sign off and send you another one next month that talks about sleep routines and nutrition and a yoga video designed specifically for the types of exercises that dispatchers might need.  If you have specific areas of your body that you would like targeted during the yoga video then let me know.  I am a certified yoga instructor and will be designing and teaching the class myself.  

All of this is just to say.......the management and I have your back.  Thank you for your service.

Lee