Processing Stress in Uncertain Times
I was recently interviewed about the topic of current events and the toll they take on our Mind-Body Systems. If you are someone who is experiencing flare ups of chronic pain, headaches, tension or a general feeling of being worn down during the last few months, I invite you to read on.
Let’s start with a general state of the world and all of the new current events that we are processing. What is your take on it?
The specifics of what we’re all working are new & more global in scale, but in a sense we’re not working “new” dynamics. It’s just amped up in 2020. Go back to 2019 and individually we still had a whirlwind of problems; they were just less compressed by worldwide events. But from a local perspective, protests and quarantine aside, our internal experience hasn’t been that different.
How many different projects do you juggle on any given day? There’s so much. If you were to map out all of the things that you’re responsible for, it’s insane. Someone recently posted a comment to my LinkedIn feed about being in a state of constant vigilance and responsibility in recent months. But, I’d argue, what’s changed? We’re constantly in action/doing mode and rarely consciously taking the time to rest.
What is the best way to handle a busy, chaotic life?
I have a young entrepreneur client and he optimizes his day by breaking it down into 15-minute increments. There’s some high-level, excellent optimization happening there. It’s structured and productive, but there’s not a lot of freedom in there to just be. To me, that’s a large amount of discipline and responsibility without a lot of unstructured freedom. It’s not bad, but we need to balance things out. It is necessary to recognize there’s a lot going on in that System.
When you say there’s a lot going on in the System, what do you mean by that?
We’ve created very complex lives: work, school, activities, all of it. Biologically speaking, we have relatively little bandwidth for integrating and holding all of the information we’re inundated with. Our brains evolved to track a limited amount of information in a local environment. Yet, today in our world, we have unlimited information bombarding us constantly.
Some interesting data to consider -- our nervous systems are bombarded by about 11 million bits of information per second. We can biologically track about 2,000 of those.
As a species, we are in an interesting transition time. In the last 25 years, we’ve had access to an exponentially growing amount of information with the Internet. In the last 10 years specifically, we’ve been able to access all that information instantly and on-the-go through our smartphones.
And again, biologically, we are not yet equipped to handle the volume of information available to us. It’s like we’re standing underneath a tidal wave. How do you swim in this thing? It’s very, very difficult. This leads to vigilance, stress, burnout, anger, and agitation. We’re all just full. Ten years isn’t enough time for our Systems to evolve the ability to process and integrate the sheer volume of information we face daily.
Because our Systems are so full, is it harmful to constantly be consuming the news?
I often reference a 2014 Guardian article that gives statistics about how reading the news is bad for your health and makes you unhappy. And this is from a globally respected media outlet! Intellectually minded people value being informed, but at some point, you can’t sort it all. It creates stress and dissonance in your System. It’s counter to a happy life.
A story for you. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was preparing to leave on a 3-month long backpacking trip. 15 of us going to the Rockies. We decided to postpone for 24 hours to connect with our families, and a day later we all set off into the Wyoming backcountry. For the first 9 days of the trip, we had zero interaction with other humans or news media. Then occasionally we’d run into horse campers and get news tidbits from them. But for the most part, we weren’t connected with the news cycle. It felt amazing. As far as my general health and well-being, it was one of the happiest, healthiest times of my life.
So is your advice to mindfully disconnect from the news cycle?
Absolutely. There’s a lot happening in the world and you do need to be aware. And, I acknowledge my privilege in being able to turn off the news and therefore not be affected by many of the events out there. But we can all take time to create some boundaries. Keep taking action, and then make time to pause and integrate. Let your System feel the deep emotional impact of what’s happening in the world. Process it. If you don’t, you’ll burn out and lose gas.
You talk a lot about how many of us are in a constant state of action and rarely rest. What do you say to the person who simply cannot quiet their body and mind?
To someone who is really stuck in action, the advice of “stop and rest!” is really nebulous. It can easily be dismissed as, “I don’t have time for that.” Sometimes people try to rest and their System literally won’t let them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard stories of someone being on vacation and not being able to relax. They return from vacation stressed because they couldn’t let go of stress!
If you’re stuck in this ready-to-always-act mode, a helpful tool is a very simple time boundary. Specificity. Say, “for this small amount of time – 5 minutes even – I’m going to be strict about it. I’m going to turn off media and focus on non-doing for this very defined period of time.” For some, it might literally be vegging on the couch, staring at the wall (one of my personal favorites). Others may need a more active rest practice, like taking a bike ride or a walk. The “what” you do isn’t as important as defining the time period. That type of boundary gives your System a container to relax into just a bit. You may have to ask for help. For example, can you count on your partner to take care of the kids or the pets to help you fully relax?
What about living in a world where emotions are extremely heightened? How does this impact the body?
When an emotional response happens, it’s often because there’s some trigger inside of us. We can look at the two sides of recent police actions as a great, evocative example here.
For me personally, when I watched videos of police and how they responded initially to protesters, it was very personally evocative. To me it was violent and triggering. And, if I try and understand the other side with openness and compassion (and without all of the information for sure), I can imagine the anger at protests and looting being grounded in the importance for things to be stable and certain, and for established institutions to be respected, versus the disruption of large-scale protesting and demands for change.
I think the common thread both sides are experiencing here is the need to feel safe. And we experience safety in different ways – for some, this means institutions make them feel safe while for others institutions have created anything but safety for them and need to be dramatically changed or even dismantled and rebuilt.
When your core sense of safety or your beliefs and norms about what’s right are challenged, it will trigger you emotionally. It messes with your internal sense of structural and emotional integrity. It’s just hard to be rational when you’re emotionally triggered.
Explain more of what happens at a human-system level when norms are challenged.
Anger is an easy place to go to. And I’ve heard anger described as a “secondary emotion” – an experience that follows an initial emotional response, like shame, sadness, or fear. The emotional neuropathways in our brain are well worn so it depends a lot on your past experiences. It can manifest as fight or flight. Or for some, it could be freeze, collapse, or dissociation.
How will the stress we’re experiencing from current events manifest over time?
Even before the current events, I saw pain manifesting from just everyday living. Clients would come in pretty wired up and they’ll likely continue to come in wired up. For some people they might already be full and so the incremental change in life-intensity from current events won’t be that big. There may not be room for anything new to go in anyway. It’s hard to predict as we’re on the early end of current events, but over time these types of events tend to manifest in tension, chronic pain, and potentially other health challenges. Chronic stress diminishes our immune systems’ function.
Why do you recommend Active Rest?
Our Systems are looking for certainty, constantly. Imagine what it feels like when you’re walking on icy ground. Your body is tense and cautious and when you get to safer, solid ground, there’s a let-down. A feeling of relaxation.
Uncertainty will evoke tension and distraction in all that you do. It draws you away from being in full connection with yourself, with the moment, with the people in your life, simply relaxing and enjoying yourself. Uncertainty and tension call on a lot of resources that could be spent enjoying or engaging in the things you’d rather be doing. It’s similar to chronic pain. There’s constant noise in the body, and it draws down resources, leaving us with limited bandwidth. Practicing Active Rest is a great neurobiological hack that uses your physical structure as a proxy for creating some certainty. It gives you back some of that bandwidth so you can be more fully in your world, whatever that looks like.
Is Active Rest the only antidote to uncertainty?
No, there are many. Meditation, exercise, connecting consciously with other humans, establishing a breathing practice, positive thinking and gratitude practices to name a few. These are the ones I typically recommend that are most adaptable in these times.
Meditation is a high-level skill of calming the mind that is great for your System. Exercise helps physiologically and gives you a feel-good hormone boost. Human connection is excellent because we’re simply wired to connect with others and it soothes our System. A breathing practice calms the nervous system. Positive thinking or gratitude practices can literally help rewire your brain perceive a greater balance of “good” vs. “bad” information in your field.
What is one thing we should definitely do if we’re feeling uncertain?
Number one: give yourself that time boundary to unplug and process it all. Let yourself feel the emotion, the powerlessness, the anger, whatever it is so that your System can metabolize it. It can be difficult to do that and sometimes we habitually fill our time with more doing because we don’t want to engage with that emotion. But it’s critical; it’s the only way to integrate all that’s happening, reboot, and be able to move forward.