Switching off and improving wellbeing: the key habits

Working in cybersecurity means spending many hours in a world of permanent threat, and that takes its toll. In this stretch of my conversation with psychologist Barbara Diez we talk about something that sounds basic but almost nobody applies: learning to switch off. Making time for sport, for rest, for really separating your life from your work no matter how much that work fascinates you.

Barbara compares it to what happens to psychologists who specialise in trauma, who immerse themselves so many hours in the dark that they need to draw a clear border between their world and their patients’. The same thing happens in cybersecurity, all the more when we’re talking about people who come from law enforcement and carry a complex past. If you don’t mark that boundary, the sense of threat follows you home. The recipe isn’t magic, it’s small sustained actions. Routines and self-care habits, because the brain responds to repetition and, without a healthy routine, it reaches for the harmful shortcut. And above all quality relationships, with your partner, your friends, your family. Good bonds are, according to her, one of the best predictors of wellbeing there are.