Gelisim News

According to experts, touching the face with hands many times during the day unconsciously increases the risk of coronavirus transmission. Pointing out that hand cleaning is very important to deal with the virus, experts say that hand cleaning can be useless as long as we touch our faces with hands. Emphasizing that researches show that people touch their faces 9 to 23 times an hour under normal conditions, Psychiatrist Onur Okan Demirci said that the anxiety and stress created by the coronavirus may increase this rate. Stating that some exercises can be done so that we do not touch our faces, Demirci said: “We can do 1-minute exercises. Since we have been doing these behaviors for quite some time, these urges will not be interrupted at once. Our goal is to gradually reduce this behavior. If you are a note taker, you can easily decrease these urges distinguishably. It is not possible to give a time for this; it may vary from person to person. But it will decrease over time to a minimum.”
 

Demirci spoke on the exercises that can be done to Demirören News Agency (DHA).

Psychiatrist Demirci stated that we do not touch our faces deliberately, and said that the first step is to notice this situation.

Indicating that individuals who have difficulty at noticing can ask a relative to help them warn them, Demirci said: “Thus, we have the chance to reduce the risk of transmitting the coronavirus to ourselves. Our second step is to change our touch behavior. In our brain, there is a center that interprets the behavior of people in front of us. We also get that feeling from the facial expressions, behaviors and movements of the other person. Here we can think like empathy. Empathy is a skill that comes from there, too. Seeing someone who is itching causes us to be itchy, so it would be more rational to deal with something else in order to distract our attention instead of watching someone who is itchy in such a situation.”

Psychiatrist Onur Okan Demirci from Istanbul Gelisim University listed the exercises that can be done for 1 minute as follows:

“When you notice that you are touching your face, you can hold your hands tightly together for 1 minute to change this. We can wait 1 minute by putting your hands under your hips or try to change the behavior by squeezing the once famous stress ball for 1 minute.”

Demirci also suggests taking notes apart from the 1-minute exercises, and says: “Taking notes can be important in changing such behavior. For example, when you realize the moment you touch your face, you can make a difference when you take note of how you noticed and felt your ‘I felt my face itchy while watching TV’ and then ‘I took my hand, scratched and relaxed’. We may have a chance to change this as we notice.”

Demirci pointed out that some situations trigger the urge to touch face, and said: “For example, as your glasses falls, you constantly push your glasses up, you can use the glasses tie. The nail eating habit is very common, so we can cut the nails as short as possible, or we can prevent the nail eating habit by using the gloves we use very often at home. Your hair can fall on your face, which can create an urge of touch. We can tie your hair. When you sense that you will take your hands to your face, you can change your focus and you should definitely try to find an occupation.”
 

Stating that itching can also occur in allergic situations for some people, Demirci said: “If this happens, you can definitely take a medication for allergies from your doctor and ask for it to be reduced. Basically, we can reduce the rate of touching our faces with situations that we will do through behavior change.”