brainwagon

I’ve found that there are three basic strategies that have helped me in the past. They are probably not comprehensive, or even the best, but they are pretty simple to remember, and cover more situations than you might think.

I categorize them as Plan, Act, and Ignore.

Perhaps the most productive and generally the best is to plan. You see that in the future there is some issue that you will be facing, and you develop a plan so that when the anticipated outcome happens, you already know what you will do and what the likely outcome will be. This is good because it can help stifle the anxiety of uncertainty. If the hurricane strikes, you know you have food, a backup generator, and an evacuation plan. You put away savings for a rainy day. You perform maintenance on your house and your car. Then, when these things happen, you don’t need to develop a plan at the last minute. You know what you will do, and what the likely outcome will be. You’ve worked to minimize stress and danger to yourself.

The problem with planning as a strategy is that it is predicated on you actually understanding the problem and its likely probability. The world is very complicated, and it is difficult to balance all the possibilities, and develop plans to cover all contingency. You prepared for a hurricane. But a lot of the damage from the recent hurricane Milton was caused by the tornades that struck ahead of the actual hurricane. If you plan for something, you may be ignoring some other risk that turns out to be somewhat surprising. Planning is most effective for the predictable risks in life. Spending a lot of time planning for low-probability or unforeseen risks or events can be pointless and exhausting.

So, the second strategy: you act. In this case, something unforeseen or even unforeseeable has happened, and you need to do something. In cases like this, you may not have a plan, or at least not a complete plan. You need to rely on your resources (intellectual, financial and emotional) to find a course which minimizes damage to yourself and those who are important to you in light of new situations and information. Reusing the previous example: perhaps the hurricane course shifts in the last 24 hours, and your planned place of evacuation is no longer safe. If you are lucky, you may have foreseen this possibility and know several alternatives, or can quickly search for alternatives. When you act, you quickly draw on the best information you have, and chart the best course that you can see as quickly as you can.

I originally thought of this strategy as reaction. But in trying to clarify my own thinking about this, I found that the term implied the kind of thoughtlessness implied by the phrase “knee jerk reaction”. One of my personal mantras is “act, don’t react”. Reaction is the lizard brain attempt to cope with problems, with little analysis or conscious thought. Reaction is the “flight or flight” response that we have, which admittedly is often an effective survival strategy. I don’t mean to denigrate it, in fact, it often can save your life. But if you have a moment, it is usually good to ask “am I just reacting to new information, without actually understanding it or considering it, and do I have time (even limited time) to consider a different course of action?” If so, then action may be the strategy that makes sense.

Lastly, you could simple choose to ignore the problem. This sounds bad. Ignoring problems means they don’t get solved, and unsolved problems can pile up and cause you greater problems in the future. This doesn’t seem like a strategy at all.

But the thing is that the human mind (and certainly my own mind) has a near infinite capability for worry. Worry and stress can have significant negative effects on your body and well being. All this planning and action takes significant energy and resources, and can keep you from relaxing or enjoying what’s going on. Ignoring problems can be a valuable skill, particularly when the problem is not amenable to either planning or action.

As a for instance, years ago my mother was in failing health. I knew that she was going to die within months. I had long term plans for how I was going to cope with the financial practicalities of her care. I also took regular actions to call her daily and to fly up to visit her at regular intervals. But I had to cope with the fact that she’d have good days, and long days. There were times when I was called to act when she had a particularly bad turn.

But no amount of planning or action was going to prevent or even delay the course of her illness. I was concerned about her every day. If I had allowed myself, I could have been concerned every minute of every day. So I adopted a different strategy: I chose to ignore the problem.

That sounds bad, so let me explain my process. My internal monologue basically was “Mom is ill, and will probably die at some point. Is there any plan I could engage in that will stop or delay this negative outcome? (No.) Is there any action that I could take now that will help? (No.) Then I am going to choose to ignore this problem. I am going create a mental closet that holds this problem. I am going to take the worry and angst that I feel, and the ineffectiveness that I feel in not being able to fix things, and I am going to put that problem in the closet. Most importantly, I am going to reopen this mental closet at some specific time in the future (tomorrow, Monday, a week from now) and open that mental door, and relook at this problem, and decide whether there is some additional plan or action could be helpful. Perhaps I will choose to put the problem back in the closet again. Perhaps some new information or change in the situation will make a new plan or action beneficial, and will provide me with a new course of action.”

I don’t believe that you should ignore problems indefinitely. My internal conscience and basic decency would not have allowed me to abandon my mom and simply stop thinking about her. But the ability to carve out some space in my life when I am not pointlessly and unproductively worrying about her was essential to my mental health, if not my survival. One needs to have space to experience all emotions, not just the flight or flight responses that we’ve evolved.

At first, this “mental closet” seems really difficult. But I found that practice, and the assurance that I wasn’t just ignoring problems, that I was postponing worry to gather space and strength, and would address them more productively if my situation changed made it easier as time goes on. In fact, the ignore strategy is just a variation of the plan strategy.

A great number of my friends and family are experiencing angst as the result of the uncertain political climate, as well as numerous other more personal changes in their lives. I get it. I’m right there with you. I decided to write this post mostly to clarify my own thinking. I suspect I’ll be dusting off these strategies with greater frequency in the coming weeks, months, and years. But while I may have been motivated by my concern about the political situation here in the United States, they apply to many sorts of problems. I do not claim them to be particularly universal, but I offer them in the hopes that you might find some part of them useful or encouraging in your own lives.

And remember: when the ship is sinking, put on your life jacket first. If you don’t care for yourself, you won’t be able to care for others. Self care is part of caring for others.

Best wishes, and be kind to yourself and others.